Hello, I’m developing an app that provides physical services such as equipment storage, maintenance, pickup, and delivery. The app does not provide any digital content, digital features, or any form of digital subscription.
For payments, we are using an external payment gateway (similar to Stripe Billing or Braintree):
iOS: Users are redirected to Safari to complete the payment.
We also plan to support annual automatic renewal billing, using the payment gateway’s “billing key” or “recurring billing” feature. This is essentially a card auto-charge for a physical service, and it is not an in-app subscription.
I want to ensure that our implementation is fully compliant with Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, especially 3.1.5(a) regarding physical goods and services.
I would appreciate guidance on the following:
For apps providing physical services, is it acceptable to process payments through an external browser (Safari) instead of using In-App Purchase?
Is recurring billing / automatic renewal with an external payment provider allowed, as long as the service being billed is physical and not digital?
For apps offering only physical services, should we completely avoid using the Monetization → Subscriptions section in App Store Connect, since those subscription products apply only to digital content?
Our goal is to ensure that the app follows Apple’s policies correctly and does not mistakenly fall under the category of digital subscriptions.
Thank you very much for your help.