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

For years, Patreon has been exempt from Apple’s 30% App Store cut for reasons that weren’t entirely clear. But that era is about to end. The popular crowdfunding platform has announced to creators that supporters will need to start using Apple’s in-app payment system soon.

Change applies to all new supporters beginning in November

Here is the news from Patreon’s blog post:

Unfortunately, Apple is requiring us to switch over to their in-app purchase system for all iOS transactions or else risk being kicked out of the App Store altogether…

This has two major consequences for creators:

1. Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop.
2. Any creator currently on first-of-the-month or per-creation billing plans will have to switch over to subscription billing to continue earning in the iOS app, because that’s the only billing type Apple’s in-app purchase system supports.

This is a huge change that will primarily impact Patreon creators, not Patreon itself, when it goes into effect this November.

Patreon recommends creators raise rates

Patreon recommends that creators handle this change by raise the cost of their membership plans in order to offset the 30% that will start going to Apple.

Rather than relying on creators to perform the calculations themselves, Patreon has built a new tool that can automatically increase those prices to the correct amount—and only in the iOS app.

The good news from this change is that existing Patreon memberships won’t be impacted. Creators are not suddenly going to forfeit 30% of their income to Apple in November. Instead, all existing supporters can pay what they’re already paying, and creators will receive 100% of that cost.

But for all new supporters moving forward, this change could make things especially messy.

It’s especially messy because, as Patreon points out, Apple’s in-app purchase system doesn’t offer the same flexibility as Patreon’s own solutions. So the per-creation billing plans that some creators use, for example, won’t be able to exist in the iOS app anymore.

9to5Mac’s Take

This huge change will likely spark a lot of online discourse—yet again—about Apple’s App Store fees. It will be interesting to see if the company makes a public statement. As of now, it is unclear why Apple let Patreon operate with its own payment system for years and years, before suddenly springing this change.