I’m one of those longtime Netflix subscribers who pays for the streaming service via Apple’s App Store. Too bad for me: Netflix has announced that it is eliminating this billing option, and the company has begun informing people that they’ll have to start paying the streaming giant directly. As first reported first by The Streamable, this move affects people in the U.S. and Canada, as well as other territories. Even though I haven’t received this email from Netflix yet, it’s probably only a matter of time before it comes in and I’m forced to make the switch.
Why Netflix is cutting off App Store billing
For years now, large companies have had issues selling in-app purchases and subscriptions via Apple’s App Store. This is because Apple takes a 30% commission from every in-app purchase you make via the App Store. If you’ve subscribed for over a year, Apple reduces its cut to 15%, but companies such as Netflix and Spotify are unwilling to pay even that.
A few years ago, Netflix removed the option for subscribers to sign up and pay via the App Store. However, if you’d been paying via the App Store at the time of this change, you could still continue to do so without interruption. Quite a few people continued to pay Netflix via Apple, and some were even grandfathered in at the old price of $9.99 per month. All of this is now going away, because Netflix has decided to stop allowing App Store billing altogether. If you want to continue using Netflix, you’ll have to pay them directly, and you’re going to be paying full price.
I’m not thrilled by the change. I’ve never been a big fan of saving my payment information across multiple sites, especially for recurring payments. If all my subscriptions are on the App Store, they’re far easier to cancel. Not only is it convenient to review all my subscriptions in one place, but cancelling is a three-step process. That’s much better than some convoluted cancellation processes across the internet, which put through all kinds of guilt-tripping “are you sure?” screens before you can actually unsubscribe.
I stayed subscribed to Netflix through all these years and many changes partly because I didn’t want to lose access to App Store billing. Now that it’s going away, I’ll probably finish watching the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation and then cancel my subscription.
