Is our in-app purchase model unique?

You will have a number of problems trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. For example, how does a user restore their purchase in another device? How does a user purchase two different products selling for the same price? A better approach would be selling a virtual currency like Tokens as a consumable IAP. You might sell packages of 10 Tokens. The user exchanges Tokens for products. A product could be 3 Tokens, another 8 Tokens. You would need to be responsible for restoring a purchase to other devices owned by the user - that could be done through the users iCloud key-value file or through your server. Be sure to tell app review you are handling the restore function v

Thanks for the response. The digitial image(s) they are purchasing are stored for the user in our cloud and therefore are always available in their account. So, for example, if they get a new phone, once they download our app and login, all previously purchased images are automatically in their account. I'd like to avoid the token option as it places more friction in the process. I'm struggling with why this is any different than a mobile app that provides authors of digital books with a platform to sell their books to customers. Not every author or publisher would sell their book for the same price. They would select a price tier that aligns with the value of the digital book theyr are selling. I'm not sure why what we are doing is any different.

Reread my post. How do I purchase 2 items with the same price? What happens when I restore a purchase? Round hole, square peg. You are not selling a non-consumable IAP you are selling entrance to a store - you want Tokens.

Just so I'm understanding your response (much appreciated!), let me give a clearer example of what we are trying to accomplish. Photography companies use our platform to distribute the digital photos they take of their customers. For example, a wedding photographer takes pictures of the bride and groom and publishes those images to the bride and groom through our app so that they can purchase the digital images they wish to own. Wedding photographers are highly specialized with sophisticated equipment and editng of the images so they typically charge about $25 (they would use tier 25 of $24.99) per image they sell to the bride and groom. No other consumer has the ability to buy those specific products because they are personal photos of the bride and groom that we only display to those two people. In another example, a youth sports photographer takes pictures of each kid on a baseball team. This is high volume photograpbhy that is typically sold to parents at a much lower rate, like $4.00 per image (tier 4 for $3.99). Each kid's pictures are distributed to their parents for the ability to purchase.

Once that specific customer purchases their unique images using IAP, we keep them stored in the cloud so they can always be accessed (resotred) from any device. This is almost identical to a music streaming or ebook service where the purchases are always available online.

Does this clarification change the way you view this?

Yea, I understood your business model and yes, a non-consumable IAP will haunt you and yes, the Token model will work. Bride wants two photos - of bride/groom/groom's parents and of same with bride's parents. No problem - 25 tokens for first and 25 tokens for second. Or purchase first as '$24.99 product' and second as...."you've already purchased this product. Would you like to download it again for free?" it doesn't work. And restoreCompletedTransactions on which photo? And you need to capture every price point with empty products.

OK, the lights just went on for me. Thanks for your patience. I get it now. Are there some non-game apps that are similar to our use case that you would recommend me looking at for more context? Thanks for all your help.

No problem. I am unfamiliar with any apps out there other than mine. I use Tokens for iPunchStore and Beat The Market but in both cases I am selling only one thing multiple times.

One more question, if you don't mind. Let's say that a school portrait photographer takes a single pictgure of each student. They then want to sell specific backgrounds that will be the same product options for all customers. Product 1 = green background for $4.99, Product 2 = blue background for $4.99, Product 3 = forest background for $4.99, etc. Since those will be standardized products, will that work without requiring the token model?

Yes but that means you need three products, all selling at $4.99 and, more importantly, what about the twins? I will not be able to buy a green background of both Tweedledum and Tweedledee. After I buy a green background of Tweedledum the system will not let me repurchase the same product - a green background intended for Tweedledee. And what about following Tweedledum through 1 st grade every year until he graduates in 12th grade? Each time I go to purchase a new picture it says "You already purchased this product....".

The Token system has no problen letting me spend 5 tokens, actually 10 tokens (remember - twins) each year for all 12 years and all with the green background.

In that example, you only need three 'products' if the pricing is different - one if not. Background, $4.99 - your choice of the following colors.

One more thought I'd like to run by you. We deliver the photos to customers using an album. So, if the user opens the album that includes 6 digital images (the different backgrounds we discussed previously) they can purchase, could we use a non-renewable subscription model that would let the customer "subscribe to the album, this unlocking the content?

In a non-renewing subscription you can let the user access anything you want. During the subscription time period you may not be able to limit that access by a use constraint since that confounds the concept of limited by time with limited by consumption (I.e. a consumable IAP). After the subscription time period you could let them keep whatever you want (or nothing) in whatever limits you want.

This looks like a great solution for us. We want to offer other benefots to the customer of they subscribe to the album, including 20% print products they order through our app, etc. We don't want to take the images away after the subscription is over, however we will have other benefits expire. Just to play that out, let's say we deliver an premium album of images to the Anderson family that inlcudes their kid's school portraits. This is delivered through our app as a specific product we attribute to the school photography partner who took the pictures. The parents subscribe to that album, which gives them full access and rights to the images and other benefits that will expire in a year. Then, another partner with a different subscription offering delivers a new album to the same Anderson account, this time for youth sports photos. I assume the customer can subscribe to that 2nd album becuase it was a unique non-renewable subscription in our product catalog, correct? I really want to thank you for your guidance. You've been incredibly helpful!

You can create multiple non-renewing subscriptions - one for each product - but then you have the same problem as with non-consumables in that you need a unique non-renewing subscription for each product. Alternatively, you can reuse a single non-renewing subscription (or have a single non-renewing subscription for each price point and offer to reuse the one for the matching price point) to handle multiple purchases wherein the user would purchase a subscription through IAP and then have an opportunity to assign a particular product from your catalogue to that subscription purchase (i.e. I purchase a subscription for photos of my older son and then three years later I purchase the same subscription for my younger son). This is identical to the Token approach with three differences:

1) A subscription gives the user repeated access to the purchased product during a fixed time period. The user may access that product over and over again during a time period but after the time period their access can be denied. A consumable gives the user access to a product a defined number of times and that number extends for ever and ever - it does not expire at a fixed time but rather expires only after it is used. Beyond these specific grants, your app can extend anything it wants beyond the number of times (for the consumable) or the fixed time (for the subscription).

2) When a user repurchases a consumable the app store says something like 'do you want to purchase....' without referencing the earlier purchase. When the user repurchases a non-renewing subscription the app store says 'You have already purchased this non-renewing subscription. Do you want to renew or extend it.' You are stuck with that description even though the Anderson family, having purchased the photos for their older son Tweedledee now wishes to purchase the same package, three years later, for their younger son Tweedledum - or wants to purchase a completely different 'product' with the same price point.

3) You are responsible for copying the purchaed product of the non-renewing subscription from one device to another device owned by the same user. YOu have no such obligation for a consumable. But in both cases it is easy to do that using the user's key-value file in their iCloud Account.

Forgive me if this is an inappropriate question for this forum as I am new here. You've been an incredible help and I've struggled to find people as knowledgeable as you on this topic to consult with us as we build out our model. Do you do consulting?