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How can Etsy make money selling anything via an iOS app?

• Etsy takes a 3,5% cut from all sales (that's their main business model). However, all iOS apps that have in-app purchases must pay 30% to Apple. I do not own an iOS device and can thus not check prices, but I can only see this app purchase model working in one of four ways: Either all prices are inflated by 43% in the app to allow Apple to take their 30% cut and both Etsy and the seller make the same amount of money, Etsy sellers know that if their items are sold via an iOS app, their income will be smaller (and cannot find anything like this in the Sellers Guide), Apple has an exemption rule from their App Store Policy for market place apps such as Etsy, or Etsy lose a ton of money every time someone buys anything via an iOS app. Which one is it? Or am I completely missing something?

• Answer:

  Not all purchases made with an App are In-App purchases. Apple defines only 4 things that can use their payment processing framework for in app purchases. From https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf There are four supported categories of In-App Purchase items that you may sell: •Content •Functionality •Services •Subscriptions   So Etsy couldn't use Apple's framework even if they wanted too as they could not pass the criteria for allowed categories. So Etsy just uses their own payment scheme rather than Apple’s Store Kit framework. No Store Kit framework means that they don’t have to pay the 30% payment processing fee.