There have been polarizing changes in the industry to how app stores handle the purchase and registration for digital one-to-many sessions (i.e. your virtual livestream classes). The classes that have been the saving grace for small businesses throughout the pandemic ... We have been committed to being transparent with our clients throughout this process and we wanted to keep our industry in the know of how these new guidelines will negatively impact businesses.
App stores have decided that digital one-to-many sessions (i.e. virtual classes) are now considered digital content and fall into the domain of In-App Purchases. In-App Purchases are the buying of goods and services from inside an app on a mobile device and come along with a 30% fee that is placed on app developers by the app store.
With much pushback to the app stores, there have been multiple delays on the app stores enforcing the implementation of these guidelines. The latest deadline is now set for June 30th, 2022. Meaning that if app developers do not implement the In-App Purchase functionality by then, mobile apps will not be able to even display digital one-to-many sessions.
fitDEGREE will be implementing features to filter out these digital one-to-many sessions from our mobile apps and hosting them solely on our Progressive Web App (found at app.fitdegree.com). fitDEGREE will continue to host digital one-to-many sessions on app platforms that are choosing not to implement these egregious fees.
Back in September 2020, a tech giant decided that virtual group fitness classes were now considered
“Digital Goods” and will now require payment for them to be made via “In-App Purchase”.
In-App Purchases were typically reserved for app store games such as Angry Birds and CandyCrush. With the fitness industry going digital, this tech giant decided to seize the opportunity to audit additional industries to seek new revenue streams.
All purchases for Digital Goods (i.e. memberships, packs and drop-ins), would now have a 30% fee by the app store, leaving you with only 70% of your revenue instead of the usual 97% after traditional processing fees.
In-App Purchases would make it so you, the merchant, would have little to no control over the ability to apply refunds to these Digital Goods as well as give your clients the ability to manage gift cards and account balances.
As if that wasn’t enough, unfortunately there is more… With this tech giant pushing for In-App Purchases, they also shared that when these guidelines go into effect it will now be prohibited to even display these digital one-to-many services. Meaning that your mobile apps can no longer share your virtual class schedule to your client base and that in order to find that schedule, they will need to navigate to your website or our web version of the platform.
Thought that was over the top? Well, there’s more! We’ve also been informed that you aren’t even allowed to point them in the right direction to find your virtual class offerings from your mobile app … Any communication to your client base about virtual offerings must be either in-person, over email, or through the phone.
fitDEGREE will NOT stand for this and will do everything that we can to SUPPORT small businesses.
To work within the guidelines imposed upon us, we can still move forward with the sales of traditional “In Studio” products, however we will be taking Digital Goods off of certain apps and moving them solely to our Progressive Web App version, found at https://app.fitdegree.com/ and other app platforms which are not imposing fees.
Moving these purchases to solely be on these platforms will allow your business to continue collecting the revenue you earned and rightly deserve.
While we recognize this as an inconvenience, we don’t believe that taking 30% of a small businesses’ revenue is fair or just. At fitDEGREE we strive to be a progressive software dedicated to innovation and we would much rather have our focus be on helping our clients grow their businesses. We've decided that we will not give in to these bullies and allow them to change our view on how we should service our fitFam.
This is an unfortunate situation, but as entrepreneurs and business owners, we are faced with difficult challenges time and time again. We appreciate your support throughout this time and hope that you understand and agree with the decisions that we are making to navigate this hurdle.Our team has joined 20 other Top Tech Executives and signed a letter sent to Washington, D.C. about the Open App Markets Act.
In a nutshell, it is asking the Senate to take recent app store changes very seriously. Of course we encourage you to read the original document for yourself
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You, the consumer, are limited to choose not only between apps you'd like to engage with but,
Added fees that may be passed along to you for that desired utilization.
From a business perspective, these changes heavily limit competition (and abilities for smaller businesses to break through)
Do you or your business stream music? That could change.
Do you or someone you know rely on virtual technology for doctors or care team visits? Also impacted by this.
Do you or someone you know dabble with crypto currency? Yup - accessing personal financial decisions could be heavily impacted.
Sign and share this link with others you think would like to support this. This is a petition to "Tell Your Lawmakers: Stand Against App Store Monopolies and Support the Open App Markets Act!"
