The South Korean Government Kicks Against In-App Commissions By Apple And Google

On Wednesday, a South Korean parliamentary committee passed a vote which recommended the amendment of law regarding the in-app commission charged by companies like Google and Apple. The parliament is advocating that the percentage that is being charged from developers for in-app purchases by Google and Apple should be put a stop to.

In the recent past and even before then, Google and Apple have been faced with huge criticisms concerning the commission that they charge developers when users make in-app purchases using apps that were developed by these developers. Users typically access these apps via the app stores provided by Google and Apple and developers are made to remit 30 percent of whatever they get from in-app purchases to Apple and Google.

Android users who want to buy and download apps majorly use Google’s PlayStore. Google has made it such that users are left with no choice but to make all their app purchases and downloads through its PlayStore app, giving it some kind of monopoly. The company has been severally accused of not allowing other app stores the opportunity to thrive. Their Apple counterparts, on the other hand, make all their app purchases and downloads via Apple’s App Store. Now, what this automatically means is that these companies have an unspoken monopoly and can choose to come up with terms and conditions whether they are friendly to developers or not, and the 30 percent in-app purchases commission is one of those decisions that has been completely frowned at.

Apple has come up to speak about the bill. A Tuesday statement by the tech giant said that the bill would “put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections” and make them susceptible to several attacks that its supposed “monopoly” has been protecting users from.

Google also had something to say about the bill. Wilson White – Senior Director of Public Policy at Google said that “the rushed process hasn’t allowed for enough analysis of the negative impact of this legislation on Korean consumers and app developers”.

Experts believe that Google and Apple can go ahead to cancel out the in-app purchases commission, that they were not the only ones capable of ensuring a payments system free from fraud, and that developers could create their own fraud-proof payments system.

Although the vote to put an end to the 30 percent in-app purchases commission being paid by developers came on Wednesday, a parliamentarian has revealed that the session has been provisionally delayed to the 30^th of August.