Digital goods, physical goods, and external links: charging inside and outside mobile apps

For any business distributing services through mobile devices, the payment channel dictates both operating margins and direct customer ownership. App stores impose strict rules defining which transactions must pass through their proprietary in-app purchase (IAP) engines and which can be handled by an independent online payment gateway. The implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the European Union has loosened several historical restrictions, yet it has introduced complex fee schedules that merchants must analyze carefully.

Digital goods versus physical goods: the core distinction

The fundamental boundary separating these models remains the inherent nature of the purchased product or service:

• Physical goods and services consumed outside the app: passenger transportation, food delivery, apparel e-commerce, or lodging reservations are not only permitted to use independent payment gateways, but are required to do so. Apple and Google do not mandate or support their internal billing systems for these transactions; merchants pay standard acquiring fees negotiated directly with their payment provider.
• Digital content, features, and in-app utility: streaming media subscriptions, cloud storage, virtual gaming currencies, or premium productivity tiers fall squarely under the mandatory IAP framework whenever the purchase originates and settles within a standard mobile app.
• Multi-platform services (the reader model): applications displaying digital content previously purchased on other surfaces (such as e-books, magazines, music catalogs, or desktop software) can grant access to paying users without charging inside the mobile app, provided they historically avoided driving users to web checkouts from within the interface—a rule undergoing regulatory disruption across the European Union.

The European regulatory framework and external linking

Across the European Economic Area, competition enforcement has required operating system owners to allow anti-steering mechanisms. This means mobile developers handling payments in mobile apps can now inform users about better pricing on their external websites and insert links pointing directly to a web checkout.

However, routing customers outside the app store does not extinguish the commercial obligations owed to platform gatekeepers. Both Apple and Google have deployed structured terms for businesses that use external pathways:

• Initial acquisition and store service fees: when a user downloads an application from an official store and subsequently completes an external purchase within a defined attribution window, the platform levies ongoing fees to cover user discovery and platform infrastructure.
• Alternative in-app billing systems: in several jurisdictions, Google enables third-party processing alongside Google Play Billing (User Choice Billing), granting a modest nominal discount (typically 3 to 4 percentage points) off the standard commission rate. The merchant must absorb its own gateway fees on top of this remaining charge and submit monthly transaction audits to Google.

Commission mechanics and additional processing costs

Baseline app store commissions range between 15% and 30%, depending on annual merchant revenue tiers (small business programs) and recurring subscription tenure. When assessing whether to process payments off-platform, calculating the consolidated net cost is essential rather than naively comparing 30% against standard web gateway pricing.

Processing a card transaction on the web incurs European Union interchange fees (capped at 0.2% for consumer debit and 0.3% for consumer credit), acquiring markups, and technical authorization fees. However, when using regulated external linking programs under updated European terms, platform service fees and core technology levies can significantly reduce the theoretical margin gain, as detailed in our analysis comparing charging inside and outside apps.

Furthermore, web checkouts require standalone compliance with strong customer authentication (SCA) under PSD2 mandates. This step introduces authentication friction compared to the seamless native biometric authorization (Face ID or fingerprint recognition) built into in-app billing.

Reconciliation, cancellations, and customer data ownership

Shifting payment flows outside the mobile store creates major operational changes across three functional areas:

• Customer data ownership: charging through a proprietary web checkout grants the business access to client identifiers, email addresses, and the ability to issue formal VAT invoices (21% standard rate in Spain). In standard in-app purchases, app stores frequently act as partial merchants of record, withholding customer billing details from the developer.
• Dispute resolution and refunds: store-based transactions subject customer refunds entirely to platform discretion, offering merchants minimal recourse. Conversely, web checkouts grant the seller full customer support autonomy, but also introduce direct exposure to bank chargebacks and dispute administrative fees.
• Server-side entitlement synchronization: if a subscriber purchases on the web and subsequently launches the native app, the company's backend must validate access rights (*entitlement*) via an authenticated user session, independent of App Store or Google Play receipt validation.

Designing an effective hybrid payment architecture

There is no universal blueprint for balancing native in-app billing, external link redirection, and standalone web payment channels. For low-ticket digital products driven by impulse buying, the frictionless native checkout experience frequently offsets higher platform commission rates through superior conversion performance.

Conversely, for B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) products or high-average-order-value subscriptions, direct web collection via an independent payment gateway remains vital. It enables customized corporate invoicing, direct debit or local payment methods, and unmediated contractual governance over customer accounts. Rigorously modeling local compliance requirements and platform fee structures across each channel ensures the most resilient and profitable technical architecture for your business model.