The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has proposed letting app developers direct users to payment options outside Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, reports Reuters.
The competition regulator said any fees Apple and Google charge developers for enabling such “steering” must be fair and reasonable, remain below existing App Store and Play Store commissions, and allow developers to either pass savings on to consumers or reinvest them in innovation.
An Apple spokesperson told Reuters it could open the door to “scams, bait-and-switch tactics, and the circumvention of parental controls.”
“When users are directed away from Apple’s trusted payment infrastructure, they lose the protections they rely on Apple to provide,” the spokesperson said, adding the U.S. tech giant would continue to “make our concerns clear” to the CMA.
This continues ongoing brush-ups between the competition regulator and Apple, In February the CMA said it was seeking views on a package of commitments from Apple and Google.
The commitments are “intended to deliver immediate improvements in certainty, transparency and fairness for thousands of UK businesses dependent on app stores to serve their customers.” Additional commitments from Apple will deliver a step change in how developers can request interoperable access to the iOS and iPadOS mobile operating systems, giving greater certainty over how they can deliver innovative new products, according to the CMA.
The agency said the proposals represent the first changes secured by it following the designation of both Apple and Google’s mobile platforms under the digital markets competition regime in October last year. Last year, the CMA designated both the tech giants with strategic market status (SMS) in mobile platforms under the regime.
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