In-App Purchase

When a user starts a subscription or unlocks an extra feature inside the app, payment runs through the store's own infrastructure; the store takes a set commission from that transaction and enforces its own rules.

You meet it in subscription-based apps, in-game virtual items and locked premium features; selling a physical product is usually excluded from this scope and can use an external payment method instead.

It is often confused with external web payment. Some categories now allow stores to permit outside payment links, and rules keep shifting by region, for instance under the EU's digital markets regulation; by 2026, both stores offer different commission rates and payment options depending on the region.

A common mistake is assuming the external payment link permitted in some categories applies to all digital content. For purely digital items, such as in-game goods or a premium feature, routing payment outside the store's own system is generally still prohibited; overlooking this distinction leads to the app being rejected during review or removed from the store afterwards.