Ask HN: Does Apple enforce any 30% IAP cut guidelines on fintech apps? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does Apple enforce any 30% IAP cut guidelines on fintech apps?

2 pointsdavidajackson5 comments

I am working on a fintech app. Based on my experience, banks, trading apps like robinhood, and other fintech apps all seem to have their own payment systems/services incorporated (Stripe, etc). Does anyone have any experience with dealing with App Review with products like this?

From the Apple dev docs:

> Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will be rejected.

And:

> Apps used for financial trading, investing, or money management should come from the financial institution performing such services or must use a public API offered by the institution in compliance with its Terms & Conditions.

And:

> Apps that provide services in highly-regulated fields (such as banking and financial services, healthcare, and air travel) or that require sensitive user information should be submitted by a legal entity that provides the services, and not by an individual developer.

You cannot use IAP for fintech. See https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#goo...

> 3.1.5(a) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.

I wonder why Apple chose this approach. Maybe it would be too inconvenient to their users to force fintechs to use their payment processing. I'm certainly glad they didn't.

If you are asking if Apple demands 30% of whatever stock I purchase in Robinhood, the answer is most definitely no. Robinhood would be out of business overnight :)

Thanks for the response, and that is true. But I am cautious about assessing how Apple handles guidelines by assessing how they treat big companies like RH. They can crush/heckle a lot of nascent ideas/companies but I doubt they would do that kind of thing to RH for PR reasons.

I wonder if RH got some special treatment because of some VC connection or something like that. But it should absolutely not be forgotten that RH was once an extremely small company.

The real issue is that de facto if you want to invest time and money into Apple's platform, it should be for a defined reason, otherwise web dev is probably sufficient at least for a POC and market traction :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com