iPhone app and ecommerce solution

nikita68 · Jun 8, 2012

I have a client who wants to sell a physical product within an iPhone app.
They want the customer to be able to purchase the product using the app and then receive this product by mail.
I am aware that we can't use the in-app purchase api from apple to do that. As apple says:
"You must deliver a digital good or service within your application. Do not use In-App Purchase to sell real-world goods and services."

So my question is how can I build an app that allows the user to buy a product without apple rejecting the app when submitted to the app store?!?
For sure there is a way to do it. There are plenty of clothing shops that have their iphone app with purchase facilities.

I understood that Apple doesn't like when you create an app that links to an ecommece site on the web in order to process the payement (amazon kindle case...).

So I imagine that my client will have to build its own mobile ecommece site (wrapped into an iphone app) with its own payement api??

Any information on that would be very helpfull!!

zphone · Jun 8, 2012

Your client wants to pay apple 30 percent of the price of everything he sells through the app?

Unless it's a recurring regular sale with killer markup I don't see how that makes sense.

If it's a product that only is usable with an app, make the app free and say in the download instructions on the app store that you must have the product to use it.

thewitt · Jun 9, 2012

I guess I don't understand your question. There is no problem creating an ecommerce app. You cannot use iAP for this, but you can certainly use your own payment processor.

nikita68 · Jun 12, 2012

Thanks for the replies.
I wanted to make sure this was not a problem with apple. It is the first time we do an app that uses its own payment processor.
We want to develop it in web pages that will be wrapped in the app.
So as soon as the user select 'pay' he will go to the web payment screen and will follow the instructions to complete the purchase. All of this without leaving the app.

Any suggestion on the best practice to develop the payment processor for an iphone app?