Apple tries to scare some App Store users away from third-party payment platforms
Scary App Store warnings from Apple seek to keep users from using third-party payment platforms.
In the EU, Apple is being forced to allow developers to send App Store customers to third-party payment platforms to pay for paid apps and in-app purchases. This allows the developer to bypass Apple's In-app purchases payment platform which charges them a commission of 15%-30% of the value of the transaction. Considering that Apple's Services unit, which includes App Store revenue, nearly hit $100 billion during fiscal 2024, the tech giant is not letting this happen without putting up a fight.
The EU's Digital Markets Act, the legislation that forced Apple to allow developers to show alternate payment platforms, has proven to be a tough opponent for the tech giant. As a result, Apple has decided to shake up App Store users by throwing a little scare into their lives. A developer named Viktor Maric tweeted a screenshot of the App Store listing for a popular business app in Hungary called Instacar. At the top of the listing was a box from Apple containing a warning.
The warning says, "This app does not support the App Store's private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases." The use of the orange triangle with an exclamation mark in the middle indicates that Apple consider this to be a critical alert. The triangle is supposed to be used only in the most serious of situations when a specific action could lead to a serious consequence such as data loss.
Apple adds scary warning to an app in the Hungarian App Store. Image credit-X
It seems that Apple's use of this warning is being done to protect its financial well-being. By using this type of scare tactic, Apple could be in violation of the DMA, which does not allow the use of so-called scare screens. Apple's goal is to frighten App Store customers away from using third-party payment platforms and use Apple's in-app purchases payment platform instead so that it can collect the so-called Apple Tax from developers.
If you read the warning, Apple is trying to get consumers to believe that other payment platforms are not "private and secure." Apple is amping up the fear factor here since there are some well-known payment platforms like PayPal, Square, and Stripe that are secure. The problem is that you might not know whether the platform a developer uses for in-app payments is one of the secure ones.
While Apple should make its message less scary, and could be forced to do so thanks to the DMA, the truth is that developers also should reveal in advance which third-party payment platforms they use. The EU is in favor of transparency and rightfully so. But developers should not be allowed to be less transparent than Apple which, ironically, supports Apple's use of its scare screen.
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Things that are NOT allowed: