External Purchase Links on iOS: What to Build First

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers held Apple in contempt today in Epic v Apple, ruling that Apple may not charge commission on purchases made through external purchase links on iOS, nor restrict how those links appear inside a US app. The order followed Apple's own compliance with the court's original 2021 anti-steering injunction, which Apple had implemented with a 27 percent commission on external transactions, a fee the court found undermined the injunction's intent rather than honoured it. The court has also referred the matter for possible further contempt proceedings.

For a publisher that hasn't yet built a web checkout, this ruling turns a strategic option into an operational question with a deadline attached, even though the court set no specific deadline. Every day without a working external purchase link is a day of commission paid. Competitors moving faster won't be paying it.

What the ruling actually permits

The order applies to US iOS apps. It removes both the commission Apple had been charging on external link transactions and the restrictions Apple had placed on how those links could appear, including limits on button styling and the number of taps required to leave the app. It doesn't apply outside the US, where Apple's terms, including the EU's separate DMA-driven changes, continue to operate under their own rules. A publisher operating globally now has at least three different sets of terms to build against: the US following this ruling, the EU under DMA compliance, and the rest of world under Apple's standard terms.

The build order that matters for external purchase links on iOS

A studio with no existing web infrastructure shouldn't try to build a fully realised web shop in response to this ruling. That's a multi-month project, and the ruling rewards whoever ships something functional soonest. The sequence that gets a compliant, revenue-generating link live fastest looks like this.

• Payment processing first. A basic checkout page handling card payments, through Stripe or an equivalent processor, is the one piece with no acceptable shortcut, since it is the only part of this stack that directly touches money and regulatory obligations like tax handling.
• A single, simple external link inside the app, styled plainly and pointing to that checkout page, rather than a polished in-app experience. The ruling protects the right to link and describe the offer; it does not require an elaborate presentation, and a plain, working link shipped this week beats a polished one shipped next quarter.
• Server-side entitlement granting, so a purchase made on the web checkout delivers the in-game item without requiring the player to relaunch the app or wait for a manual reconciliation. This is the piece most likely to reveal engineering debt, since many studios have never needed a purchase path that does not go through Apple's own receipt validation.
• Attribution and analytics last, not because it does not matter, but because a functioning purchase path with imperfect measurement still generates revenue, while perfect measurement on a purchase path that does not work generates nothing. As we covered in Web Shop Attribution Basics as Link-Outs Go Live in the EU, most of this measurement will end up running on first-party pixels and server-side postbacks regardless of how sophisticated the eventual build gets, so there is little lost by sequencing it behind payments and entitlements.

What a minimal working version looks like in practice

Worked example: a mid-size puzzle studio with an existing website but no commerce infrastructure decides to ship the minimum viable version of this build order within two weeks rather than waiting for a full web shop. Week one covers Stripe integration on a single checkout page listing the studio's three most-purchased in-game bundles at existing prices, plus a server endpoint that grants entitlements once Stripe confirms payment. Week two covers the in-app link itself, a plain text button on the store screen reading "Buy on the web and save," pointing to that checkout page, alongside basic event logging so the studio can at least see click-through before deeper attribution exists.

That two-week build won't capture every purchase opportunity a mature web shop eventually would, and it will under-report performance relative to what proper attribution later shows. It will, however, start converting some share of purchases at zero commission from day one. A studio still in the planning phase for its full web shop can't say that.

What to leave for the second iteration

Loyalty pricing and exclusive web-only bundles are reasonable ideas for a mature web shop; so are promotional discount codes. None of them is what this ruling actually delivers. What the ruling permits is the ability to link out and avoid commission on the resulting sale, and a first build that tries to differentiate the web offer with pricing strategy before the basic mechanics have proven themselves is solving a problem the studio doesn't have yet.

The open question this ruling does not resolve

The court has already referred Apple for possible further contempt proceedings over how it implemented the original injunction, which suggests Apple's compliance approach to today's order will itself face scrutiny. A studio building against this ruling should assume the specific mechanics of compliant linking (styling limits, disclosure language, taps required) may still shift as Apple's implementation meets its first tests. Building the payment and entitlement infrastructure now is low-risk regardless of how those mechanics settle. Investing heavily in a specific link presentation this week carries more rework risk than the core plumbing does.

What this means for the next few months

This ruling doesn't end the broader dispute between Apple and Epic, and it changes nothing for iOS apps outside the US. What it does is remove the main commercial deterrent, the commission itself, that had made external purchase links on iOS economically pointless for most publishers even where Apple technically permitted them. Ship a basic, compliant link in the coming weeks and you capture that removed cost immediately. Wait for a fully polished web shop and you spend that same period paying a commission the court has already said Apple shouldn't be charging.

Related archive reading

These articles provide related context and remain subject to their stated review status.

• Web-to-app funnels for mobile games
• The DMA's First App Store Fees: Apple and Meta Fined