Apple and Google reducing their app store fees by just 3%-4% for external payment methods simply makes alternative options non-viable for app developers
Eric Benjamin Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the continuation of a policy pattern rather than a clean break from store-controlled billing: Apple previously retained a commission for Dutch developers using third-party payments, while Google took a similar approach in South Korea through a 4% fee reduction.
Google later extended alternative billing to non-gaming Android apps in the EEA with a 3% reduction in its Play Store cut, and Apple enabled specified external methods for South Korean developers. The current assessment is that these narrow discounts leave the underlying economics largely unchanged.
First-order effects
- Developers offered external payment methods still face app-store commissions only modestly below the standard route, weakening the immediate business case for adopting those options.
- Apple and Google retain most of the revenue and control associated with in-app transactions even where external-payment pathways are permitted.
Second-order effects
- Payment providers and developers have less incentive to invest in alternative checkout flows when the fee difference may not justify operational and customer-experience trade-offs.
- Rules intended to introduce payment choice may draw scrutiny based on whether developers have a commercially workable alternative, not merely formal permission to offer one.
Third-order effects
- The issue shifts competition-policy attention from the existence of alternative billing to the effective price of platform access; nominal openness can preserve gatekeeper leverage if take rates remain high.
- If this approach persists, app-store regulation may increasingly be judged on whether it changes developer economics rather than whether platforms add compliant payment options.
The trend: App-store payment regulation is moving from mandates for alternative billing toward tests of whether platform fee structures make that choice economically meaningful.