{"id":22975,"date":"2025-05-10T14:48:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T09:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandligo.com\/?p=22975"},"modified":"2025-05-10T14:48:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T09:48:04","slug":"apple-loses-control-over-app-payment-links-in-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/apple-loses-control-over-app-payment-links-in-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Loses Control Over App Payment Links in US"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\" data-start=\"85\" data-end=\"270\">In a big win for app developers, a US judge has ruled that Apple can no longer control or take a cut from external payment links in apps available on the App Store in the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" data-start=\"272\" data-end=\"561\">This decision came from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers as part of the long-running legal fight between <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/apples-iphone-17-air-avoids-bold-innovation\/\">Apple<\/a> and Epic Games, which started over four years ago. While Apple had won a previous ruling, this latest one favors Epic and all developers who don\u2019t want to use Apple\u2019s payment system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" data-start=\"563\" data-end=\"590\"><strong>According to the new order:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li data-start=\"593\" data-end=\"671\">Apple can\u2019t charge any fees or commissions for purchases made outside the app.<\/li>\n<li data-start=\"674\" data-end=\"771\">Developers are free to add links or buttons that take users to third-party websites for payments.<\/li>\n<li data-start=\"774\" data-end=\"839\">Apple can\u2019t control how these links look or where they\u2019re placed.<\/li>\n<li data-start=\"842\" data-end=\"961\">Apple also can\u2019t show warning messages to scare users when they click on these links\u2014only a neutral message is allowed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"\" data-start=\"963\" data-end=\"1195\">The ruling comes after<a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/leadership\/\" rel=\"noopener\"> Apple\u2019s VP<\/a> of Finance, Alex Roman, was caught lying in court, and it was revealed that CEO Tim Cook knowingly chose to ignore a previous court order, even though another top Apple executive advised against it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" data-start=\"1197\" data-end=\"1331\">Apple said in a statement that they \u201cstrongly disagree with the decision,\u201d but they will follow the court\u2019s orders and plan to appeal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" data-start=\"1333\" data-end=\"1662\">Before this ruling, Apple required all in-app purchases to go through its own system, taking up to 30% of the money. Developers were not allowed to even mention alternative payment options. When courts first told Apple to allow outside links, Apple started showing warnings and still charged a 27% fee on those external payments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" data-start=\"1664\" data-end=\"1783\">Epic Games and Spotify both welcomed this new ruling and said they would be updating their apps to reflect the changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a big win for app developers, a US judge has ruled that Apple can no longer control or take a cut from external payment links in apps available on the App Store in the United States. This decision came from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers as part of the long-running legal fight between Apple and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1713],"tags":[6726,6723,6729,110,6728,3643,6724,6727,1164,6730,1806,3596,6725],"class_list":["post-22975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technews","tag-app-developers","tag-app-store","tag-app-store-policy","tag-apple","tag-apple-vs-epic","tag-epic-games","tag-external-payments","tag-in-app-purchases","tag-ios","tag-mobile-payments","tag-spotify","tag-tech-news","tag-us-court-ruling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22979,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22975\/revisions\/22979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandligo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}