After the Supreme Court rejected Epic Games’ commission-related antitrust action against Apple, Apple amended its App Store guidelines this week. Developers may now offer alternate payment methods for in-app sales and subscriptions via links or buttons in their iOS apps. Apple’s compliance has technical constraints, an application procedure, and restrictions on which applications can drive users to their websites. Apple reveals its new developer guidelines in a court filing, including that Video Partner and News Partner applications cannot use the Link Entitlement.
This appears to circumvent the court’s order for Apple to eliminate the “anti-steering” section from its App Store developer agreement. This condition formerly prohibited developers from sending users to a link, button, or other call-to-action inside their app that offered an alternative means to pay for in-app purchases, subscriptions, or other virtual products.
Instead, app developers must seek approval to incorporate their desired link or button using the StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement. 
The App Store allowed “reader” apps (apps that provide access to digital content like audio, music, video, books, and more) to point to an external website where customers could manage their accounts with app developers last year. It also allowed Dutch dating app producers to direct users to alternative purchasing choices under an entitlement.
Apple again wants to regulate which apps can incorporate external connections and restrict how they’re implemented for the new U.S. Link Entitlement. Apple can do this since the court didn’t want to “micromanage” its new framework. It also stated that Apple might “take steps to protect users” from the new hazards posed by directing customers to websites to process their purchases and requiring developers to use IAP for in-app transactions.
Epic Games created “scare screens” to deter consumers from buying outside the App Store.
The new Link Entitlement has numerous more criteria, including that Apple decides which applications obtain the entitlement.
Developers that wish to include connections to alternative purchasing choices in their app must tell Apple about the app, its bundle ID, the link, and the website domain customers will be routed to.
Apple states in the court filing that the website must be one “the developer owns or maintains responsibly,” which means a developer cannot dump a consumer right on a PayPal payment screen. Instead, their payment option must be on their website. Developers are urged on the new entitlement support page to connect to their website “without any redirect, intermediate links, or landing page.”
In the event that Apple polices developers’ websites, the page cannot duplicate Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism or “discourage users from using it.”
Payment processors must also fulfill “certain industry standards,” Apple adds, and offer ways to dispute fraudulent transactions, manage subscriptions, and request refunds. This component makes sense to safeguard people from subscription fraud, according to Apple.
In the submission, Apple states that “apps participating in the Apple Video Partner Program or the News Partner Program are not eligible for the Link Entitlement,” an exemption also noted on the U.S. StoreKit Link Entitlement support page.
Apple Video Partners pays Apple a 15% commission when customers sign up through IAP, and if the customer signed up with a payment method outside the app, they can use it to rent and buy in their app.
News Partners receive a 15% commission rate from day one, not year two like other subscriptions.
Developers must obey these programs’ requirements instead of being able to publicize their payment links in-app like others.
Apple added that developers must display the alternative payment mechanism link “on no more than one app page the end user navigates to (not an interstitial, modal, or pop-up), in a single, dedicated location on such page, and may not persist beyond that page,” to qualify for the entitlement.
Apple is also providing developers with suitable templates to notify customers that clicking the link would earn them “X% off” or a “lower price.” Apple advises developers not to make “subjective claims” about their competing purchasing method, again controlling how developers may communicate with their users.
Apple set its own commission rate on out-of-app-store transactions after the court found that Apple is entitled to fees, even if IAP is voluntary. The developer must pay a 27% commission on transactions made on their website within 7 days of a user hitting an external link. This is the biggest drawback to Apple’s chosen charade because it benefits developers by not putting a link in their app. Since running their own payment processing may cost more than Apple’s 30% fee, the developer would only save money if consumers signed up on their websites without hitting an in-app link.
Epic, Spotify, and the Coalition for App Fairness, a lobbying organization of app developers, have criticized Apple’s court order compliance as “bad faith” and “outrageous” and “abusive.”
Perhaps, but Apple’s attorneys make it likely legal.
