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Comment by juiced | Hacker News Reader

Why is Apple allowing this?:

“3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality…”

My app was previously rejected because I had to built in In-App purchasing.

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You're not allowed to use other payment methods inside your app. You CAN require someone to separately browse to your website and sign up there, and incidentally use that same login in your app. Directly linking to the online payment form from your app is not allowed either.

This is how other apps like e.g. Amazon Kindle work

That explains a lot, I was redirecting to the website from a "Subscribe" link in the app. Maybe if I just called the link "Sign up" it would've been a different story. Anyway, I like having the subscription option in the app, it makes it much easier for the user to sign up, without the need to go to the website and fill in the forms.

Everyone likes it, it makes subscriptions easier - that's why Apple is actively blocking it.

I'm not sure where exactly the line is though, I remember some stories where apps were rejected because they said something in terms of "You can't subscribe in this app as that would mean Apple gets 30% of your subscription, but you can go to our website and register there".

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