In-App Purchase? How to deal with this

Hi Team, I have this scenario for my App: We are listing Shops or service providers where users can buy items/services from. Some of the shops or providers can subscribe to our Loyalty programme by paying a monthly amount and then they can start using the Loyalty feature of the App to sell their items/ service to users/ buyers. The shop owner or service provider then use the app to record each visit/ service provided and then after a particular number of purchases, the buyer gets a discount. We want to use third party to handle the subscription so we can update our database on each successful monthly payment. Once the seller stop paying, they are automatically taken out of the Loyalty programme. Do you think we would have problem with Apple IAP as the actual usage of our loyalty program is dependant on purchase of physical products or commodities? I guess my question is: is this something we should use IAP for or we can safely use third party payment provider? Thanks

Replies

I created the apps iPunchCard and iPunchStore for exactly this purpose. They were loyalty card apps that any store could start with the app iPunchStore. A user then ran iPunchCard on their device and collected punches or redeemed punches (for real world goods) from a store that was running iPunchStore. The devices communicated using bluetooth. App Review had no problem with my selling a consumable 'punches' through IAP because the 'punches' were virtual goods that were credited and cancelled using the app. They did not seem to care that in conjunction with 'redeeming' them there was a transfer of a real world good.


It is unclear whether you can do this outside of IAP by arguing that you are selling real world items. After all the apps are really creating and exchanging virtual currency.

Thanks PBK for the info. I think I get your point but am a little unclear if I can use external payment system. The thing is these shops join the loyalty membership to give discount to their shoppers but the actual value they get in return from us is the service we provide to them outside the app. We provide outside-app marketing, sales and other customer acquisation so my thinking is, the payment is for services outside the app but we use the app partly to keep track of the membership. Can this be argued as outside-app service which Apple cannot guarantee or be heard responsible for non-fulfillment?