You Can Now Buy Stepn NFTs on iOS—But You’ll Have to Pay the Apple Tax

Stephen, one mobile “move-to-earn” game which rewards players with crypto tokens for walking and running with special NFTs, launched an in-app market for NFT sales within its iOS app for Apple’s iPhone. In addition, the developer Find Satoshi Lab has integrated Apple Pay for purchases using credit and debit cards.

Mobile apps usually do not allow buying NFT on the secondary market due to the complexities introduced by Apple and Google. charges a 30% fee with most in-app purchases. That includes NFTs, which means app developers have to charge users extra to transact on mobile, or else eat the fee as part of the cost of doing business.

Stepn does the former here, but in such a way that crypto elements are extracted and bundled with additional fees in the process. In this case, Stepn made it possible for users to buy NFT sneakers—which enable users to earn token rewards—through the app through a new in-app currency called Sparks, which is not a cryptocurrency.

Users can buy bundles of Sparks through the Stepn app (via Apple Pay) and then use them to buy NFT sneakers, with no cryptocurrency interactions along the way. But Sparks prices are much higher in converted US dollars than buying the exact same items through the web market using Stepn’s own GMT crypto token.

For example, a particular pair of sneakers was listed for 110 GMT this morning, or about $31.40 based on the GMT price at the time per CoinGecko. Buying the same NFT through the iOS app will cost $44.60 worth of Stepn Sparks at a fixed cost of $0.10 per Spark (446 Sparks). That’s a 42% increase. Another direct comparison for different NFTs purchased through the two scenarios shows a nearly 43% difference.

Stepn Chief Operating Officer Shiti Manghani confirmed that Decrypt that the price displayed on the iOS app includes the fees handled by Find Satoshi Lab as part of the process for users to purchase NFTs through the app. Stepn creates NFTs on Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain.

“In compliance with Apple’s policies, every in-app purchase is subject to tax,” Stepn’s official FAQ states. “Therefore, when Spark credits are used to buy a sneaker, you may notice a price difference. This adjustment ensures compliance with the required regulations and reflects the additional tax.

If someone sells a pair of NFT shoes through the Stepn marketplace and it is purchased by an iOS user, then Find Satoshi Lab will pay the seller the listed price in GMT tokens, with the remaining balance in Sparks ( which was purchased from Stepn) then used. to cover the fee.

Apple’s 30% cut of in-app purchases—and potentially other fees to blend in around offering in-app currencies and handling credit card payments—became a sticking point. for decentralized app (dapp) developers. Typically, NFT markets charge a very small platform fee for handling transactions—for example, OpenSea charges 2.5% of the sale price for trades.

Some apps simply decide not to enable in-app NFT trades, such as The NFT market Magic Eden and the NFT monster-battling game Axie Infinitywhich just launched its “lite” iOS app last week no NFT trading capability. Meanwhile, NBA Top Shot the creator Dapper Labs said this year that it hopes to find a solution to enable in-app NFT trades in the future.

Apple’s policy has not changed here, it appears. However, Stepn found a way to work within the regulations, creating a way to make trades at a higher cost to users by using a new in-app currency and packing charges for buyers. Decrypt reached out to Apple for clarification on its policies, but did not immediately hear back.

It remains to be seen whether the convenience​​​​will outweigh the inconvenience​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Web2 apps have had to navigate this problem before, including Twitter and its Blue subscription service—which prompted owner and CEO Elon Musk to complain about Apple’s cutback and ultimately . raising the price of subscriptions on iOS.

Apple currently prohibits apps from sending users to an external web portal to pay for a service, or accept external payments, despite legal challenges. could force the tech giant to open up.

In any case, Manghani says that Apple’s huge reach makes this effort—and the higher prices for users—useful as NFT app builders try to figure out how to play well with Web2 platforms. He described the Apple Pay integration specifically as “a giant step forward” as Stepn aims to onboard 100 million more Web3 users.

Apple’s enormous scale “brings a great responsibility to its users,” Manghani said, “especially in a space that is now dominated by scams on the scale of FTX on daily carpet pulling. So the caution they take here is understandable. “

“So, as a business, we are more than happy to follow their lead [regulations] and building without stopping [based on] their feedback to enable real user adoption from Web2,” he added. “This is the basis of our growth and fruitful collaboration.”