Cross-Platform in-app purchase using paypal in webview

Question

I'm developing a music app where people can download and play music to their smart phones. Seeing that many users in my country have no credit cards and paypal is not allowed, I have come up with the following solution to allow in-app purchases:

1) For local members(Uganda), I have a voucher system where people will buy vouchers from vendors around the country. They can then enter the purchased voucher within the app, then it will update the 'credit'. People will be able to download the music/albums using credit.

2) For international members, for the reason of cross-platformness....i want people to be able to purchase using Paypal (buy button) loaded in a child-browser/in-app browser. if successful, this should update the user's credit.

Will this violate the terms and conditions? Can someone shed some light on this, as I don't want to finish the application just to have it rejected.

My app is developed using HTML5, PhoneGap build.

Answer 1

iOS

Unfortunately, as I understand your design, it would not be allowed on Apple's App Store.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Apple, so I'm only providing links to their stated terms of service for In-App Purchases, and app approval guidelines.

As I understand it, In-App purchases for iOS can use 3rd-party payment solutions (e.g. Paypal) if the user is buying real goods (a shirt, or a toy). However, if the user is buying digital goods, like music, then the app must use Apple's In-App payment technology.

https://developer.apple.com/in-app-purchase/In-App-Purchase-Guidelines.pdf:

What To Sell

There are four supported categories of In-App Purchase items that you may sell:
• Content
• Functionality
• Services
• Subscriptions

Music would be "Content".

And, from the Approval Guidelines for the iTunes App Store:

11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will be rejected

So, I think you'd need to have your PhoneGap app use Apple's StoreKit framework (you could try a wrapper like this one for PhoneGap apps).

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Android

It looks to me like your original design is ok for the Google Play Store:

Paid and Free Applications

App purchases: Developers charging for applications and downloads from Google Play must do so by using Google Play's payment system.
In-app purchases: Developers offering additional content, services or functionality within an application downloaded from Google Play must use Google Play's payment system as the method of payment, except:
   - where payment is primarily for physical goods or services (e.g. buying movie tickets; e.g. buying a publication where the price also includes a hard copy subscription); or
   - where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the application itself (e.g. buying songs that can be played on other music players)

If you're letting them buy music that can be played outside the application, then I think it meets the second exception listed above.