
Ask HN: Does Apple enforce any 30% IAP cut guidelines on fintech apps? - davidajackson
I am working on a fintech app. Based on my experience, banks, trading apps like robinhood, and other fintech apps all seem to have their own payment systems&#x2F;services incorporated (Stripe, etc).
Does anyone have any experience with dealing with App Review with products like this?<p>From the Apple dev docs:<p>&gt; Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will be rejected.<p>And:<p>&gt; Apps used for financial trading, investing, or money management should come from the financial institution performing such services or must use a public API offered by the institution in compliance with its Terms &amp; Conditions.<p>And:<p>&gt; Apps that provide services in highly-regulated fields (such as banking and financial services, healthcare, and air travel) or that require sensitive user information should be submitted by a legal entity that provides the services, and not by an individual developer.
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btian
You cannot use IAP for fintech. See [https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/#goo...](https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/#goods-and-services)

> 3.1.5(a) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people
> to purchase goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you
> must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those
> payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.

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davidajackson
I wonder why Apple chose this approach. Maybe it would be too inconvenient to
their users to force fintechs to use their payment processing. I'm certainly
glad they didn't.

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sushshshsh
If you are asking if Apple demands 30% of whatever stock I purchase in
Robinhood, the answer is most definitely no. Robinhood would be out of
business overnight :)

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davidajackson
Thanks for the response, and that is true. But I am cautious about assessing
how Apple handles guidelines by assessing how they treat big companies like
RH. They can crush/heckle a lot of nascent ideas/companies but I doubt they
would do that kind of thing to RH for PR reasons.

~~~
sushshshsh
I wonder if RH got some special treatment because of some VC connection or
something like that. But it should absolutely not be forgotten that RH was
once an extremely small company.

The real issue is that de facto if you want to invest time and money into
Apple's platform, it should be for a defined reason, otherwise web dev is
probably sufficient at least for a POC and market traction :)

