Using IAP or Credit Card payment inside app

You are reading outdated App Review Guidelines and misreading 11.3 (now 3.1.5). See:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

If you do not use IAP, 3.1.5 clearly does not apply. Your question should be 'do I need to use IAP?' 3.1.5 gives a specific case where IAP may not be used - and that reasonably implies that, for that particular case, IAP does not need to be used. But is your app performing only the specific case referenced in 3.1.5? Or does 3.1.1 also apply to your app? Read 3.1.1 - if it applies to your app then you have a problem. You must use IAP to sell that aspect of your app for which 3.1.1 applies. The only exception to this is 3.1.1.

3.1.1 In-App Purchase......If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase....

3.1.5 Physical Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than IAP to collect those payments...

3.1.3 “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions

Hi PBK,

Thanks for your clarifying and really appreciate for the highlight of guidelines.

In our expectation, we'd like to keep our customers payment information in our system for better customer support (In my previous post, e.g. the SIM issues)

So if it comes some refund issues by IAP, we cannot help the customer in the first line due to the payment relationship is between the customer and Apple but not us.

After discussing with my app desginers, we come some conclusions,

1. Place the credit card payment inside our app because we provide "out-of-app" services (e.g. IoT devices' network) => Follow 3.1.5

2. The user can skip the payment and enjoy the service but those functions related to his IoT devices' network will be useless (Here "useless" means "cannot work" but not "disallow the access" ) => Follow 3.1.1 not blocking

3. Once the payment is made inside the app, no matter what handset (iphone/ android phone/desktop/tablet) the customer is using, while he logs in our app(by our own user database), he can access his previous purchased service/content.

Or, if the user has ever paid , even if his payment is expired, he can still access the historical data. => Follow 3.1.3

Do you think this can be accepted by App review?

As long as you aren't unlocking features and functionality within the app (3.1.1) you do not need to use IAP - but aren't you unlocking features and functionality within the app ("....those functions related to his IoT devices' network will be useless")?

>Do you think this can be accepted by App review?

I don't know.

Thanks for your response that's clear enough for our internal discussion.

Maybe what we should do is submitting and see the result.

Hi,

We just lost 1.5 month with same situation. Apple rejected our app. If you provide REAL GOODS & SERVICES - use other methods. If you provide DIGITAL CONTENT - it does not matter inside or outside app - use IAP.

Content. Deliver digital content or assets, such as magazines, photos, and artwork. Content can also be used by the app itself—for example, additional characters and levels in a game, filters in a camera app, and stationery in a word processor.

We have IoT device too and almost same situation.

Thks