How Multiple Payment Gateways Integration In iOS And Android Changes The Game For Application Industry

Recently, the US court has passed a ruling that instructed Apple Pay and Google Pay to allow the application developers to integrate multiple payment gateways into their applications. This initiative was also taken by two other countries including Japan and South Korea, as the payment lock-in system was restricting the fintech industry from growth. Apart from businesses, this has become one of the major concern for the customers too, since Google Pay and Apple Pay is not operating in many countries. So, application subscription businesses are utilizing multiple methods to bring customers to their site or self-hosted payment pages, which most of the subscribers do not prefer, and they have abandoned carts. In such a situation, this ruling has been perceived as a ray of hope for many apps subscription businesses who were facing a significant cart and user churn, who can now scale application subscriptions globally.

Here in this article, you will find a brief analysis on how the Apple Pay and Google pay lock-in payment methods were affecting the revenue of the application subscriptions and how the ruling can benefit the application subscription business.

Also Read: Innovations In Subscription Management & Payment Processing That One Must Know To Keep Abreast Of The Ongoing Trends

How Apple Pay And Google Pay Has Affected Application Businesses

Since the global expansion of Apple Pay and Google Pay, it is still not available in many countries. And, because of this application subscription business has faced several problems from customer churn to hefty commission that undermined the overall revenue by 30%. Here are some most cited problems faced by the application industry:

1. Revenue Loss

Ever since the introduction of the subscription revenue model, SaaS subscriptions, OTT platforms, and product-based businesses have heavily benefited from recurring payment. One of the significant reasons behind this is the utility of multiple payments gateways that support local currencies payment. However, when it comes to the application industry no matter how many payment gateways are integrated into the application, the users are restricted to use the payment method that is supported by their mobile. This makes payment processing difficult for the application that is not partnered with either Google Pay or Apple Pay and is subjected to pay the hefty processing fee, which can be easily avoided if their application can use the self-hosted or pre-integrated pages. Thus, the revenue loss in terms of third-party service usage increased from 15% to 20% for application subscriptions with every transaction. Along with this, when an application is developed, the developer aims to make it user-friendly that can support multiple play stores. And, application developers can not restrict the user to use one platform, hence the app’s subscription business is obliged to pay a significant amount of usage fee without having any partnership, or intention to use a system.

2. Involuntary Churn

In addition to the hefty service charges and restriction to use only mobile supported payment methods, and no availability of Google Pay or Apple Pay in the country results in customer churn in terms of customer frustration. Applications usually do not handle the payment processing automatically, sometimes they store the payment information on the cloud and connect it with the payment gateway to charge the customer for using its service. Users often don’t prefer to use their sensitive payment information with third-party applications because of the fear of privacy breaches. And, in some cases, where credit card information or e-wallet information is saved in the cloud-hosted servers by either Apple Pay or Google Pay can not be accessed by application developers without becoming a partner.

Also Read: Recurring Payment Challenges? Switch to the Ultimate Subscription Management and Payment Processing Platform

How Mobile Application Subscription Businesses Can Benefit From The Ruling

1. Grow Subscription Business

The first benefit of freedom to use multiple payment gateway integrations offers to app businesses is they empower applications to scale globally. Since every country or region is using different payment gateways, hence offer local gateways increase the chances of application to get a swift and stable source of revenue. Simultaneously, it eases the payment process for customers, as they don’t have to manually enter credit card information and experience the hustle of going to a third party or outside application to make a payment.

2. Less Commission Payment & Improve Customer Trust

Since the application can integrate with multiple gateways and payment methods, they can easily avoid the hefty or extra payment to utilize the non-partnered services. This also opens up avenues for application to widen its reach and customer base.

Another benefit that applications can enjoy by offering pre-integrated or preferred gateways options is, it builds customer trust in the application, as it has taken an initiative to ease payment processing and information security of their customers dearly.

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3. Local Payment Gateway Support

The moment app subscribers start to grows, this puts pressure on the application developer to support the customers at every step. The significant one is the payment needs of their customers. Hence, the third benefit of the freedom to integrate multiple payment gateways allows merchants to offer locally hosted or self-hosted gateways that empower customers to pay in multiple currencies directly from their e-wallet or credit card.

Also Read: Introducing the Multicurrency Support for Recurring Billing and Payment Processing in SubscriptionFlow—All You Should Know About Solutions & Implementation

4. Reduce Customer Churn

Like we have said above that not having an option to pay via e-wallet, visa, or master card, and change currency, along with third-party or redirected payment hosted pages are the major concern of customers. Therefore, allowing customers to personalize or giving the option to choose preferred payment gateway, not only lower the cart abandonment for in-app purchase but also reduce customer churn.

5. New Customer Acquisition

Lastly, the freedom to use multiple payment methods and offering locally hosted gateways helps the application developers to widen the customer reach and expand globally. Simultaneously, the merchant can reach out to customers who have left the application platform voluntarily due to not having the option of the desired payment method.

Conclusion

The debate to integrate multiple payment gateways and the freedom to select any payment gateway has been around for ages. But, Epic and Apple’s clash to launch Fortnite with an integrated payment gateway has ignited a global debate, when they took the matter to court. As a result, the court order to give freedom to app development. In the future, this is going to ease the long-awaited app lock-in payment frustration for both customers and developers, both. And, will help business to App industry to collect payment for application subscription with utmost ease. The best thing is, you can automate your payment collection for recurring billing management with SubscriptionFlow.