Purchase physical product from iPhone app without Apple in app purchase

Question

Can an iPhone app allow a user to purchase a physical product (say a pen or a mouse) from inside an app, without using Apple in app purchase?

Is it allowed by Apple?

If yes, do you know any API that supports this?

Thanks AJ

Gaming

There are apps like Ebay etc. so I don't think that would be a problem. Don't think there are any specific APIs for it though... – Hypocoristic

Answer 1

You are not permitted to sell physical goods or services using 'In-App Purchasing' since the goods purchased via this method must relate directly to the app using them.

You are free to implement your own payment handling system for selling physical goods though - for instace the PayPal API

If you already have a website for this purpose you could even forward them to that to take the payment - though this may reduce the quality of the user experience greatly.

Flickertail

Many thanks for your response. For the second option you suggested, if required, is it okay to redirect the user to the website in UIWebView – Gaming

Is there a link to apple.com that outlines this? – Watkins

Can we implement our own API for transactions? – Olav

Answer 2

Yes, but you can't use Apple payments to do it. All of the apps use their own payment processor to do it (Paypal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, etc).

They each have API's -- there is some code for PayPal in this question

Has anyone implemented the PayPal API through a native iPhone app?

You cannot use these mechanisms to deliver a digital good to the app (features or content), but you can use it for physical goods (as you wanted to).

Greenheart

Answer 3

Yes,

It is allowed to sell physical goods related to the app in-app on iOS and Android. Here is one interesting startup that handle logistics - http://www.sellinapp.com (for physical items). They use http://www.ZooZ.com as a payment gateway.

Hope this helps.

Pint

Answer 4

From Apple In App Purchase we can't able to purchase physical items or services, allowed only Digital Goods and services. Ref: https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf
See 5th page.

Other than Apple , many third party gateway are there to do.

• https://www.paypal.com/

• http://www.sellinapp.com

• http://www.zooz.com/

• https://stripe.com/

• http://www.ccavenue.com/

  For PayPal SDK: https://github.com/paypal/PayPal-iOS-SDK/

Switcheroo