Hi,
I was unable to get in touch with anyone within Apple that could answer this specific question related to my app. I'm designing a peer-to-peer tutoring app that connects students together on a 1-on-1 basis for homework problem help.
Our business model is charging users to load balances to their accounts (purchase of a balance, like UberCash) that they then can use to fund problem uploads to the app. Their balance is deducted from when they upload problems to get taught.
Users can also teach on our platform and are paid to do so. They accumulate earnings and those earnings can be transferred to their bank account or used to fund their own problem uploads.
In Apple's guidelines, 3.1.3(d) mentions apps that facilitate 1-on-1 person-to-person experiences (such as tutoring) do not need to use Apples IAP to process purchases (purchases of the balances to upload problems in this case). However, 3.1.1 mentions that anything to unlock functionality in the app, such as in-game currencies (the earnings that users can accumulate from teaching others in this case), must be subject to IAP.
My question is how these guidelines apply specifically to this case. Do we need to use IAP to process purchases of the balances but can use some other medium like Stripe to enable bank account transfers? Or can we use Stripe for the whole thing, to process purchases of balances and transfer of earnings to bank accounts?