There are two types of Subscription or PPV Purchases:
1. Multi-platform Subscription or PPV Systems: the system (such as LC EasyPay) is both payment processor, as well as access-provider to contents and customer-management-system.
2. In-App purchases: the App-Store becomes payment processor and access provider to the purchased contents within that particular app on that particular App-Store.
With Lightcast EasyPay there is currently no App-Store fee. Only the 20% EasyPay fee applies as LC EasyPay also becomes the payment processor, cutting out the App Stores as “middleman”. This solution saves the publisher the 20-40% App Store fee.
For In-App Purchases (which we only integrate on request and at a fee): an additional 20-40% App Store fee is deducted by the App Stores as the App Stores become a middleman who act as payment processor, and passes on 60-80% to LC EasyPay, which then passes on 80% of the net revenue received from App Stores to the publisher.
So there are two additional costs for publishers who order in-app purchases:
1. One-time dev costs for app-side integration of each App-Store’s in-app purchase system
2. Ongoing 20-40% fee all App Stores automatically deduct before passing on revenues.
3. Customers (PPV Ticketholders or Subscribers) no longer have multi-platform access to their purchases/subscriptions. In-App purchases through an App-Store only works on apps of that particular App-Store. Example: customer subscribes to an in-app subscription in a FireTV App (which uses Amazon’s subscription & payment service), AppleTV has no way of knowing anything about that subscription or payment account with Amazon if the subscriber tries to sign in to watch their subscribed contents on an AppleTV device. Also: Apple would not care to allow that as it does not receive a single $ from Amazon, thus not receiving anything.
This applies to all apps on all app stores. As soon as in-app purchases need to be integrated into an app, both dev-costs and the 20-40% app-store deduction comes in effect.