App review rejected for External payment system

We wanted to use paypal as an external payment system. Apple refused the App because we aren't using an in App purchase system. Here is their message.


Guideline 3.1.1 - Business - Payments - In-App Purchase



We noticed that your app or its metadata enables the purchase of content, services, or functionality in the app by means other than the in-app purchase API, which is not appropriate for the App Store.



Next Steps


While the payment system that you have included may conduct the transaction outside of the app, if the purchasable content, functionality, or services are intended to be used in the app, they must be purchased using in-app purchase, within the app - unless it is of the type referenced in guideline 3.1.3 of the App Store Review Guidelines.




In-App Purchase


It may be appropriate to revise your app to use the in-app purchase API to provide content purchasing functionality.


In-app purchase provides several benefits, including:


- The flexibility to support a variety of business models.

- Impacting your app ranking by consolidating your sales to one app rather than distributing them across multiple apps.

- An effective marketing vehicle to drive additional sales of new content.


The price changes. We use an annual subscription system and some promo code. An In app purchase system wont allow us to use it correctly.


Any solution please? Is there a way to use an external payment system?


Thank you

Replies

You can change prices for in-app purchases. You can have annual subscriptions too. And promo-codes. What's the problem?


I am one of the few people who has the same app both in the (Mac) App Store and outside of the store. My issues with the store are all technical and sandbox-related. As far as payments and purchases go, the App Store is better than anything else by far. Don't be fooled by people who say you can do it for less than Apple's 30%. That's not true, at least, you can't do it legally. It is true that many people don't do business legally.

You may have some problem implementing your ‘promo code’ system into Apple’s IAP because they don’t want you to ‘sell’ a promo code and use that sale to get around IAP. For example, purchase the IAP for $10 or buy a promo code for $6 and get the same IAP for $2. So you can’t sell or otherwise get value for a promo code. If you tell App Review that you will not sell promo codes they may allow it. To use a promo code just create 2 identical IAP products with different prices. If the user enters the code offer them the lower priced IAP.