Apple has told several social-networking apps to disable their ‘tip’ functions | Hacker News Reader

Apple has told several social-networking apps to disable their ‘tip’ functions

wsj.com

15 pointslxm21 comments

Am I the only one here who thinks Apple/Google should not be able to skim more than a token 1-3% fee off transactions? Both already make enough money off their customers and they effectively have a duopoly on mobile platforms. If there were dozens of app stores (more like repositories at that point) that you could easily search across, then the market would be self regulating. I don't think that's the case right now.

It seems expensive to get set up in every supported country https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204411 https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/tabl... with requirements for a business entity, money processing licenses, etc., and that's before hooking up to local payment methods (credit cards, prepaid cards, mobile top-ups) and paying their fees.

Paypal or some other large entity could probably do this, though.

Walmart and Amazon make lots of money too, let's make it so they can't mark stuff up more than 1-3%.

well, "should vs can"

In the realm of "should", I'm afraid regulation is your only bet.

Otherwise obviously any company will take whatever % they think will get them the maximum long term profit

"Already making enough money" sounds like a contradiction :)

Yea, but I mean when you have $256 BILLION sitting around doing nothing you can probably afford to stop squeezing the hell out of artists and developers.

> have a duopoly on mobile platforms

There ARE dozens of app stores. These two are very very strong ones. The thing is how long Apple and Google and continue to squeeze people until someone will come up with a clever trick to bypass their payment system.

Sure there are alternatives on Android and the Windows phone platform (which nobody uses because running multiple app stores is cumbersome) but Apple has their entire ecosystem, silicon to cat videos, locked down hard.

Next will Apple command a cut when I transfer money via my banking app or PayPal?!

That's my thought here as well. This seems eerily close to just demanding a cut of every transaction on their platform.

Wonder what'll happen if they demand Amazon pay some % of sales for their physical goods.

In their guidelines, IAP is specifically for virtual goods and services (i.e. definitely not physical goods).

Right, but what's stopping them from charging say 1% on every transaction whether it's financial or physical, on some future date?

That's exactly what this is and I'm confused as to why Apple thinks they can do that. A legal suit would cause them more problems, so why demand something so ridiculous?

Apple Pay is a move in that direction. The question is at what point developer and users will abandon their platform.

Honestly, this genuinely upsets me. This is one of the few ways to make mobile publishing an ad-free experience and Apple mindlessly injects itself into the process. They did the same thing to kill Readability's monetization model awhile back.

So will they be coming after Square? I use square cash to pay friends and even rent.