Sunday, December 20th, 2015

Update: Apple now allows the use of Apple Pay for making donations.

Apple promotes “Shopping with Apple Pay” in its App Store.

But where are the iOS apps for donating with Apple Pay? It would only seem appropriate for a company whose mission statement now ends with a dedication “to leaving the world better than we found it” to leverage the utility of Apple Pay in the nonprofit world.

And maybe, if they are feeling generous, Apple could “donate” the cut of the transaction fees that it normally takes with Apple Pay.

In the meantime, here’s the user experience for donating in iOS, using the app Share The Meal as an example:

Yup, that’s right, bounced out to Safari to fill out payment information. Same with other donation apps on iOS like Small Token and Google’s One Today.

So why is it easier to pay for an Uber than to donate to UNICEF?

Because of Apple’s own rules:

21. Charities and contributions

21.1 Apps that include the ability to make donations to recognized charitable organizations must be free

21.2 The collection of charitable donations must be done via a web site in Safari or an SMS.

My guess is that this is a leftover from pre-Apple Pay days when Apple did not want to take its usual 30% cut from in-app purchases when a user was donating to charity, but also did not want to deal with the overhead of deciding whether each transaction was legitimately charitable or not.

Since Apple Pay incorporates existing payment platforms, still having to jump to Safari doesn’t make much sense.

So the question is, will the executive now in charge of the App Store decide to change this rule?

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