Apple is testing a new subscription payment system for iOS devices that would allow developers to automatically charge a higher subscription renewal price instead of requiring an explicit subscription, as long as the user is notified in advance of the renewal price increase and have the option to cancel your subscription.
While this is a fairly common practice with subscription services, this is not how it is supposed to work on iOS. From the Apple developer documentation (opens in a new tab):
"When the price of a subscription increases, Apple notifies affected subscribers via email and push notifications and asks them to accept the new price. In iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4 and later, affected subscribers also receive a notification via a pricing consent sheet that automatically displays in your app... If they don't agree, your subscription expires at the end of your current billing cycle."
The new payment system was first reported by developer Max Seelemann on Twitter (Opens in a new tab) and was later confirmed by TechCrunch (Opens in a new tab).
iOS business people... The subscription price increases as a simple NOTICE instead of having to confirm that subscriptions expire otherwise. Is this new behavior for everyone or exclusive to Disney+? pic.twitter.com/zt7c15QcTAMarch 24, 2022
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The issue appears to be limited to the Disney+ app for now and only appears to affect a limited number of users as part of a pilot test of a new iOS payment system.
Apple told TechRadar that the company is "testing a new Commerce feature that we plan to launch very soon. The pilot includes developers from different app categories, organization sizes, and regions to help test an upcoming enhancement that we think will be great." ". for developers and users, and we'll have more details to share in the coming weeks."
It's unclear if this system, if implemented, would be open to all developers on the iOS platform, or if only select developers would have the ability to automatically charge a price increase.
Analysis: Although it could be worse, it's still a bad idea
One of the worst things about subscription-based models is that they require a lot of juggling and user management. Who among us has not completely forgotten that a subscription fee was due on a certain date and only realized once that we suddenly had much less money in the bank than we did?
This is especially problematic when it comes to an annual subscription, which is a lot of money and is much more likely to be forgotten by the user (making it less likely to be canceled before renewal fees). Subscription services are a very attractive model for companies for this reason, and a major headache for users.
Apple's current system is about as good as you'd expect, all things considered. It might not stop you from forgetting about an impending renewal and overburdening your bank account accordingly, but it does at least force you to explicitly agree to a higher price after an 'introductory' fee is due and automatically unsubscribes if you don't. Do not do anything.
We'd rather see Apple stick with this system than let a company automatically charge users a higher rate if they don't act on it. On the plus side, it seems that the renewal price increase notification is very obvious and there is at least one link for users to review the subscription and cancel it if they wish.
However, there is no avoiding the fact that it could open the door for wealthy developers to take advantage of users by starting with a very low price and then drastically increasing it for renewal. While the majority of users would immediately move to cancel if they saw this type of fraudulent behavior, even with the new notification system, there will be a small subset of users who misunderstand, misunderstand, or simply miss the notification and find themselves with a superior notification. to load expected out of the blue.
Given this possible nightmare scenario, it's likely that only certain big developers can automatically charge you a higher price this way, which is a different issue. This would give the big players in the industry special treatment that puts smaller legitimate developers at a disadvantage, with no obvious benefit to the user.
Given Apple's generally good track record when it comes to user protection, this feels like a huge step backwards and is disappointing to see. If the big fish in the App Store pond get special privileges, we should stop pretending that Apple's platform is as fair as the company claims.
As this appears to be a small pilot test, we hope that Apple will see how valuable its current subscription payment model is to its users and not break what is already working well.