VPP Redeemable Codes in Different Countries

Hi all. I hope that someone is able to provide some advice:


We create custom apps for various businesses and their partners. We can't distribute these apps on the app store as they're custom B2B apps. We don't like the Enterprise program user experience (manually trusting the developer on the phone) for the end users it's just horrible UX, and most of our clients don't use MDM.


So, we're left with one option, which is to get our clients to sign up for Apple Business Manager, and have the app distributed using redeemable codes.


The problem though is that most of our clients have users in various different countires. If a client from USA signs up for Apple Business Manager and generates redeemable codes for the app we built for them, then those codes will only be redeemable by those with USA Apple IDs.


Therefore a client would need to create separate Apple Business Manager accounts in each country where they have employees, so they can give redeemable codes to those people.


But, it's impossible to create an Apple Business Manager account if you don't have a DUNS number, and most businesses only have a DUNS number for the country where their headquarters are. Total catch 22 situation.


It's therefore funtionally impossible to distribute apps via Apple Business Manager using redeemable codes for a company that has employees in more than one country.


Most businesses have MDM for their corporate devices, but asking people to enroll their personal device on a company MDM is madness - they'll simply never do it, and given that business are moving more and more towards 'Bring your own device' - this issue seems like a really annoying oversight by Apple.


It would solve this issue if Apple would allow redeemable codes to be redeemed in any country where the app is available.


Does anyone have any advice, or is there sometihng we're missing here?

Post not yet marked as solved Up vote post of TAB_Developer Down vote post of TAB_Developer
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What I think Apple only puts barriers at various points since production and especially in the distribution of apps. Just in demanding a separate store for B2B is a sample of how the company has a belated thinking.

I dream about the day you no longer need app stores and be able to distribute free-form content straight from the browser as a PWA
Anyone from Apple support could participate more in this forum

Post not yet marked as solved Up vote reply of wide Down vote reply of wide

+1 this is very annoying. Many of our employees work in other countries and use their personal devices and Apple IDs.


The only practical solution I see for foreign BYOD employees is on the public app store.

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We're running into the exact same problem. We develop Enterprise apps for Fortune500 companies.

Our audience is employees, contractors and visitors of the companies.
As we serve employees and (known) visitors MDM does not provide an option
Public appstore distribution is opaque (apps or updates sometimes get refused because not for general public)

A solution would be to enable the ABM for Multinationals to allow to distribute globally and not only in the country they have a DUNS number.

Hope someone is able to figure this out.

any updates / workarounds for this?
Any progress on this item?
We are facing same the issue. Is there a work around for Redemption Codes to be redeemed world wide in any region.
Any update?

+1, same issue for my organization. Any updates?

This is ridiculous.

We're developing an app for a small organization where all devices are personal. Already it proved surprisingly convoluted to distribute the app internally. Finally we found the Redemption Codes solution - which btw still feels like a workaround - somewhere on the web, because in Apple's docs it wasn't clear at all.

So after all the hoop jumping for weeks now it turns out noone can install it apart from employees based in the specific country registered in ABM (which is almost noone).

What the frack??? Especially now when most companies are doing a lot of remote work how do they expect everyone to be in the same country?

Possible infinitely ugly workaround (not tested yet): instruct employees to temporarily switch region to the desired one in their device/iCloud/appstore whatever. (yes I know but at least it might work)

  • Tried this but it requested an addess an credit card for the other country. The address you can put anything but the credit card is an issue.

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We are facing the same issue and this is quite frustrating. Doesn't make sense , specially when we are targeting any new customer in a different country. Overall, no customer is going to take that lengthy and painful path to try the app.

Is apple listening to this problem and provide some workaround pls?

We're facing the same problem as well. Until now we have asked our customers to create a Business Manager account per country, so that they can create and distribute codes themselves. Which is an absolute nightmare by the way. Everybody is sick about how Apple makes processes unnecessary complex.

Simple solution for Apple: make each VPP redemption code work for each country's App Store. Then global HQ only needs 1x Business Manager account and can distribute the codes easily to all her global employees.

Does anyone have a solution? Same problem.

This is ridiculous. The enterprise program is available if your organization has more than 100 employees. So if you are a franchisor with a lot of franchisee in other countries you cannot access to a program which costs 299$ a year but you have to install a MDM solution which costs around 2$/device per month. Aka thousands $ each year. It is strange that an Apple program CANNOT work without a third party software solution. It is unbearable that the only workaround is for EVERY franchisee to buy a Mac and get an apple customer id so that they can use configurator2 to enroll a device.

+1, We are facing the same problem.

Also for us - surely there must be something to do to make redemption codes international we have 38 different countries.