In-app Purchase

[William Spence]

Although it had passed app review twice, I had an app rejected recently from Apple's App Store because it does not use the in-app purchase API. My app is a real estate app that you can log into, or if you don't have an account, you can create it in the app and pay for a monthly subscription. Since it is a cross-platform app for Android, Apple, and desktop, I wanted just one payment solution to make it simple, so I chose Stripe. I open a webview in the app to pay for the subscription. Apple claims that since my content is locked until payment is made, so I am required to use the in-app purchase API to unlock the content. Now that I am so far into development, this could be a huge change that adds a lot of time to my actual release. I have two options as I see it:

1) Implement in-app purchase API somehow into my code

2) Give the user the option to Sign Up or Log In. If they choose to sign up, redirect them to my website in safari to sign up and use Stripe as I have already laid out. Once they have signed up they can then move back to the app and simply Log In.

I know absolutely nothing about in-app purchases. I always thought that they used Apple Pay, which I would prefer not to do. Can the in-app purchase API work with my Stripe Account and subscription products that I created there, or would I be forced to transform my whole workflow? Of the two options I listed above, which would you choose?

Thanks for any insights!

[rewb0rn]

Hi,

generally you should carefully review the Apple developer agreement / paid applications agreement to understand in which cases you are bound to the inapp purchase by Apple. For example in Google Play, all games are required to use the in app purchase API but in some other cases you may not need to use their API and can save the 30% cut.

So if you understood the requirements and you really do need to use their API, then you will have to use one of the available ANEs that allow you to do Apple purchases from within your Air application. For example this one: https://airnativeextensions.com/extension/com.distriqt.InAppBilling

Please note the following: The Apple in app purchase API will take care of everything related to payments. You do not need to forward your user to a website or collect their credit card info. All you need to do is tell Apple what products you have and what they cost. Then at any time you call the in app purchase API to tell Apple that this user now wants to start a payment and Apple will some time later respond with success or failure. In return, Apple asks for a cut of the revenue that is probably much higher than what you are used from Stripe.

There are also ways to verify those purchases on your server, which sounds like a requirement for you. But first, include the API in your app, test it, and then the next step would be to transfer the receipt to your server where you can issue the purchase to the profile of the user.