Apple forces Patreon to use in-app purchases or be removed from the App Store

For years, Patreon was exempt from Apple’s 30 percent cut in the App Store for reasons that are not entirely clear. But that era is coming to an end. The popular crowdfunding platform has announced to developers that backers will soon have to use Apple’s in-app payment system.

The change will apply to all new supporters from November

Here is the news from Patreon’s blog post:

Unfortunately, Apple requires us to switch to the in-app purchasing system for all iOS transactions, otherwise we risk being kicked out of the App Store completely…

This has two important consequences for the authors:

1. Apple charges a 30% App Store fee on all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, as well as on all purchases made in your Patreon store.
2. Creators currently using first-time monthly or per-work billing will need to switch to subscriptions to continue earning revenue from the iOS app, as this is the only billing type that supports Apple’s in-app purchase system.

This is a huge change that, when it goes into effect in November, will primarily impact Patreon creators rather than Patreon itself.

Patreon recommends that creators raise their prices

Patreon recommends that creators deal with this change by increasing the cost of their memberships to offset the 30% that will go to Apple.

Instead of relying on creators to do the calculations themselves, Patreon has developed a new tool that can automatically increase these prices to the correct amount – and only in the iOS app.

The good news about this change is that existing Patreon memberships are not affected. Creators won’t suddenly have to give up 30% of their earnings to Apple in November. Instead, all existing backers can pay the amount they already pay, and creators will get 100% of that cost back.

For all new supporters, however, this change could cause particularly great chaos.

This is particularly annoying because, as Patreon points out, Apple’s in-app purchasing system does not offer the same flexibility as Patreon’s own solutions. The per-work billing plans that some developers use, for example, will no longer be possible in the iOS app.

9to5Mac’s opinion

This big change will likely spark a major online discussion about Apple’s App Store fees once again. It will be interesting to see if the company makes a public statement. At this point, it’s unclear why Apple let Patreon operate with its own payment system for years before suddenly making this change.