Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

taler.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 34 posts

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#11

Post by n3t »

lxgr wrote: post #8
n3t wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example? I've just checked 3 different apps which offer premium features. All of them go straight to Apple Pay, without showing any other options. EDIT: okay, I think get it now. In-app purchases != taking payments in general. E.g. I have different options for payments when using the Amazon app but only Apple Pay when buying a pro version of a metronome app. It's in-app purchases that force Apple P…

That's not Apple Pay, these are iOS in-app purchases. If you or the author call it that, nobody here will understand you.

Makes sense now, thanks.

To be fair, as a user, I don't see the expression "in-app purchases" while I _do_ see the Apple Pay logo. It's easy to get them confused.

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#13

Post by lxgr »

n3t wrote: post #11
lxgr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not Apple Pay, these are iOS in-app purchases. If you or the author call it that, nobody here will understand you.

Makes sense now, thanks. To be fair, as a user, I don't see the expression "in-app purchases" while I _do_ see the Apple Pay logo. It's easy to get them confused.

What's probably happening here is that you are paying Apple using Apple Pay. Apple is the merchant of record for in-app-purchases.

So it's not entirely incorrect (but definitely confusing) to say that the end user is "paying using Apple Pay", but they're paying Apple, not the app vendor.

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#14

Post by marcellus23 »

lxgr wrote: post #4

The author does not seem to understand the difference between Apple Pay (incorrectly spelled as "ApplePay") and in-app purchases, or at least incorrectly assumes both to be called "Apple Pay". This makes the article basically impossible to understand to anyone not noticing that subtlety. In fact, the actual Apple Pay is considered by Apple to be just another form of third-party payments for apps that sell "in-app-pur…

Yeah, this is a remarkably sloppy article that’s just plain wrong. Apple requires using in-app purchases for digital goods. Which is emphatically NOT Apple Pay, as you mention. It just charges whatever card is attached to your Apple Account.

For physical goods etc, like the Apple Store app which the author incorrectly calls out, IAP are not mandated (neither is Apple Pay), and in fact you couldn’t use IAP for physical goods even if you wanted.

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#15

Post by ethan_smith »

lxgr wrote: post #4

The author does not seem to understand the difference between Apple Pay (incorrectly spelled as "ApplePay") and in-app purchases, or at least incorrectly assumes both to be called "Apple Pay". This makes the article basically impossible to understand to anyone not noticing that subtlety. In fact, the actual Apple Pay is considered by Apple to be just another form of third-party payments for apps that sell "in-app-pur…

This is the key distinction - the article is about IAP (Apple's 15-30% commission system for digital goods) not Apple Pay (the payment method), which explains the confusion in other comments.

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#16

Post by lxgr »

samcat116 wrote: post #10

> Would the EU allow Visa or Mastercard to impose such exclusion rules on merchants who want to accept their credit cards? Definitely not. I mean Costco has been doing this for many years and people seem ok with it? It's somewhat annoying but I get enough value out of Costco that myself and I think many are happy with the tradeoff.

That's a rule imposed by Costco, not by Visa or Mastercard. Structurally, that's a completely different story.

In fact, Visa's and Mastercard's rules used to even prohibit merchants from any kind of selective acceptance (e.g. "no commercial cards" or "only debit cards") or even from charging different fees by type. This used to be called the "honor all cards rule", but is now no longer legal in many markets in its most narrow form, i.e. "same fees for all cards".

Giving merchants the option of selective payment method acceptance, or of offering discounts for some but not others, is extremely important for competition between payment methods. For example, allowing merchants to charge higher payment fees for cards that pay large kickbacks to the cardholder, or to alternatively give them a direct discount for "cheaper" cards, is one of the few bargaining chips merchants have over the networks and by extension issuers, if one were to try to address the problem of expensive card payments from a free markets perspective.

Outright not accepting one of the two large networks, in exchange for probably a significant cut in fees by the other, is a pretty smart move that works even under "honor all cards", but is only feasible if you're Costco – if you're a corner store, you'd probably just lose roughly half of your customers in the US.

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#17

Post by xyst »

Apple double/triple dips on every angle.

- $ from hardware sales

- $ from developer(s) per year

- % cut from App Store listing

- % cut from IAPs

- very small % cut/recapture from web of fees imposed by banks/cc/debit networks via Apple Pay

They are very motivated to keep all parties within their Apple wall.

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#18

Post by ckcheng »

lxgr wrote: post #16
samcat116 wrote: post #10

> Would the EU allow Visa or Mastercard to impose such exclusion rules on merchants who want to accept their credit cards? Definitely not. I mean Costco has been doing this for many years and people seem ok with it? It's somewhat annoying but I get enough value out of Costco that myself and I think many are happy with the tradeoff.

That's a rule imposed by Costco, not by Visa or Mastercard. Structurally, that's a completely different story. In fact, Visa's and Mastercard's rules used to even prohibit merchants from any kind of selective acceptance (e.g. "no commercial cards" or "only debit cards") or even from charging different fees by type. This used to be called the "honor all cards rule", but is now no longer legal in many markets in its mo…

So you’re saying Apple IAP as merchant of record forcing use of Apple Pay is ok (?) but Apple App Store forcing use of Apple IAP as the only merchant of record is not?

(You were clarifying the difference between these things elsewhere so hoping you could clarify this, thanks.)

(And I want to see more Costco v Apple comparisons!)

Re: ApplePay vs. Alternative Payment Services

#19

Post by lucasyvas »

ethan_smith wrote: post #15
lxgr wrote: post #4

The author does not seem to understand the difference between Apple Pay (incorrectly spelled as "ApplePay") and in-app purchases, or at least incorrectly assumes both to be called "Apple Pay". This makes the article basically impossible to understand to anyone not noticing that subtlety. In fact, the actual Apple Pay is considered by Apple to be just another form of third-party payments for apps that sell "in-app-pur…

This is the key distinction - the article is about IAP (Apple's 15-30% commission system for digital goods) not Apple Pay (the payment method), which explains the confusion in other comments.

OK that’s super confusing but makes sense. I can choose between Apple Pay and other options in literally every app I use and was very confused.
Post reply on HN