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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

Meh, mixed feelings about this.

I like Apple's payment system. It works, it's consistent, I can cancel things from a single menu. There are real benefits to me, the consumer, to using Apple's system.

On the flip side, other payment systems can be a hodgepodge of unsecured, user hostile (cancellations), and inconsistent. There can be real negatives to using other systems. More so some systems that don't have a consistent UX (ie, don't bump me into PayPal's UX or similar and have a branded payment page instead).

Basically, I'm not a fan of Apple being this heavy-handed. There has to be a happy middle ground. But, I also hate inconsistent payment workflows and loathe cancelling subscriptions elsewhere. Not sure what the right answer is, but as a consumer, I'm finding it hard to care about this.

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If you like Apple’s payment system, then you can choose to not use an app with a third party system. That’s your choice as a consumer, and if Apple’s service really is superior, then it will win on it’s own merits.

But Apple doesn’t want to compete. Even if their service is better and they’re confident that users will choose them over third parties, they know that allowing competition will force them to lower their obscene fees in the long term. Market forces do that in a competitive market.

That’s all there is to it. It has absolutely nothing to do with user security or privacy. Apple isn’t going to sit idly by while regulators make decisions that threaten their long term profits. They’re going to fight it for as long as they possibly can. Anything less would be laziness on the part of their executive team.

The thing is, you don't _have_ to buy things through a third party and you don't _have_ to buy anything if you don't like the payment processor. The market will correct itself when shitty applications with shitty UX don't get any sales, unless it turns most customers don't care and people like you are the minority.

In a perfect world, there'd be a "pay with Apple Pay (€2,60)" button right next to the "pay with iDeal (€2,25)" button, just like on most web shops. If you prefer to use Apple's services, you can pay the extra costs for the 30% Apple tax and lose nothing you have now. Apple are the ones putting extra restrictions on app developers, I'm sure devs would love to have the easy Apple option available right next to the cheaper option!

To me, Apple's behaviour reads like they know they can't compete in an open market with their payment processor fees so they'll fight tooth and nail to keep any form of competition out. Their cut is simply unreasonable compared to any other payment provider, but of course they'll try to fight their billions in profits whenever they can. They go so far to force developers to increase their prices and even forbid them from showing the transaction costs in the checkout screen.

> The market will correct itself when shitty applications with shitty UX don't get any sales

I think your assumption is too optimistic. The only way the market would correct itself in this situation is toward user hostility with easy signups but hard cancellations (e.g. New York Times). So yes there will be some market correction, but only in ways that increase sales at the cost of user tolerance.

The current situation only applies to the Netherlands where the law says that you have to be able to cancel a service online if you subscribed online (no phone calls/letters/telegrams/etc. can be required for cancellation) so I doubt that would be the case here.

That said, I don't think Apple should be the one to fix this system. The government should prevent such harmful behaviour through legislation rather than relying on private parties.

Besides, users can always choose not to pay for items in their apps if they can't use their preferred payment processor. People living in places where this predatory behaviour is still legal can choose not to pay through payment providers that don't allow them to easily cancel for the extra fees those providers (like Apple) charge.

100% agreement on their 30% cut. I was speaking strictly from the consumer's perspective, assuming they would never be shown two different prices.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't show two prices. In fact, the checkout screen could just as easily show the price with and without payment processor fees applied.

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