Hacker News Reader

I did, the EU did, and as a result their fees got massively regulated in the EU, below 0.5% ; on top of other reasons why this comparison is not fair and equal as discussed in many comments below (no market monopoly associated, and percentage actually matching the costs and expanses of those card issuers to their own providers [banks] as opposed to apple's fee being disconnected from the reality of the underlying costs).

The EU regulated the Intercharge fees of credit/debit cards, but not the total fees that a Payment Service Provider can charge a merchant. Those can still be 3-4% or so.

This isn't remotely equivalent or comparable. First, you're free to choose other forms of payment. Visa isn't holding a gun to your head. I know many sellers simply adjust their prices if you're paying credit -- see almost every gas station in the US. You can't do that with Apple.

Second, the fees actually benefit the customer. They're there to protect the customer from fraud, and to provide perks. I have no idea how I benefit from Apple's fees. Seriously.

Comically, I think Apple should adapt Epic's model for unreal: free for the first $1MM of revenue, only then they start to take a cut.

> First, you're free to choose other forms of payment. Visa isn't holding a gun to your head.

And you're free to choose another phone vendor. Apple isn't holding a gun to your head.

> I know many sellers simply adjust their prices if you're paying credit -- see almost every gas station in the US. You can't do that with Apple.

You can't do that with PayPal, either.

> I have no idea how I benefit from Apple's fees. Seriously.

The host the AppStore for you; allow you to search, access and download all apps and provide an infrastructure for updates and payment. Plus, they're doing basic fraud checking [0] and check that apps adhere to a basic quality and usability standard.

It's a very different topic whether the 30% cut is too much, but its not like Apple does not provide anything in return.

[0] Other comments pointed out that they failed quite badly in a case, but there's a difference between bad service and no service.

> And you're free to choose another phone vendor. Apple isn't holding a gun to your head.

You're "free" to choose one side of the same coin, because Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile app distribution market. They both abuse that market dominance to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market from offering consumers better, more efficient and cheaper options.

Google prevents mobile app distribution competitors from competing with the Play Store on feature parity because user installable 3rd party mobile app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.

And you're free to use another ISP or start digging your own Fibre cables. The duopoly has extreme power over our lines and the impact is just like with utilities.

> Comically, I think Apple should adapt Epic's model for unreal: free for the first $1MM of revenue, only then they start to take a cut.

They're halfway there. Apple only takes 15% (instead of 30%) if your annual app store revenue is under $1M.

Technically not really true, it's based on a complex system where if your run rate ever exceeds $1m (even temporarily) you get bumped into the 30% bracket for this year and the next year, even if your revenue next year is 100k. (I'm still confused that they decided to make the system that complicated, it can't increase their profits THAT much.)

This system coincidentally punishes non-subscription products like non-IAP games, where your "launch" produces a big revenue spike and then you have a much smaller long tail of revenue. To avoid getting punished by this, you'd have to optimize for a lower-revenue launch and more stable long-term revenue... i.e. a subscription.

> I'm curious if you've ever made the same argument for credit cards, debit cards and the like. All of them charge a percentage to the seller too (and many a times it's a fixed fee plus a percentage).

I always thought debit was a fixed fee. I just looked up one of the most common processors in Canada and it says the max fee is $0.035 going as low as $0.02 if you fall into a market segment that skews towards less than $20 per transaction.

I intentionally pay debit for everything and keep a low fee, low interest credit card with no perks.

Non-credit rails are region specific and usually avoid higher fees typical of credit card rails (often even free).

The processor fees for credit card rails exist primarily nowadays to support two things: fraud and perks.

With a debit transaction, your fraud protection is usually much, much lower (often non-existent). It's usually equivalent to handing over cash. With a credit card, you can call them up and get the transaction reversed pretty trivially.

There's no monopoly on credit cards though. There's multiple providers, some countries have their own (cheaper) debit card networks, and you can still pay with cash.

> Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ?

> ...

Please just say what you think and not "..."