Apple updates App Store with range of new pricing capabilities

Apple has announced the most comprehensive upgrade to pricing capabilities since the App Store first launched, providing developers with 700 additional price points and new pricing tools that are designed to make it easier to set prices per App Store country or region, manage foreign exchange rate changes and more.

Since the App Store's inception, its commerce and payments system has enabled developers to set up and sell their products and services on a global scale. The App Store's commerce and payments system offers developers a set of capabilities and tools to grow their businesses, from check-out and transparent invoicing for users to marketing tools, tax and fraud services, and refund management.

Pricing has been important to these capabilities, enabling developers to choose from a variety of business models, such as one-time purchases and multiple subscription types.

According to Apple, these new pricing enhancements will be immediately available for apps offering auto-renewable subscriptions, and for all other apps and in-app purchases later in 2023, giving all developers greater flexibility and control to price their products in 45 currencies throughout 175 storefronts.

Under the updated App Store pricing system, all developers will have the ability to select from 900 price points, which is nearly 10 times the number of price points previously available for most apps. This includes 600 new price points to choose from, with an additional 100 higher price points available upon request.

Price points will start as low as NZ$0.39 and, upon request, go up to NZ$21,000, increasing incrementally across price ranges (for example, every NZ$0.10 up to NZ$10; every NZ$0.50 between NZ$10 and NZ$50; etc.).

In each of the App Store's 175 storefronts, developers will be able to leverage additional pricing conventions, including those that begin with two repeating digits (e.g., 110,000), and will be able to price products beyond $0.99 or X.99 endings to incorporate rounded price endings (e.g., X.00 or X.90), which are particularly useful for managing bundles and annual plans, the company states.

From now, developers of subscription apps will also be able to manage currency and taxes across storefronts more easily by choosing a local storefront they know best as the basis for automatically generating prices across the other 174 storefronts and 44 currencies.

Developers will still be able to define prices per storefront if they wish. The pricing capability by storefront will expand to all other apps in 2023.

For developers distributing their apps around the world, the App Store's global equalisation tools have given them a simple and convenient way to manage pricing across international markets.

According to Apple, these enhancements expand upon these capabilities, allowing developers to keep their local currency constant in any storefront of their choice, even as foreign exchange and taxes fluctuate.

This means, for example, a Japanese game developer who gets most of their business from Japanese customers can set their price for the Japan storefront, and have their prices outside of the country update as foreign exchange and tax rates change. All developers will also be able to define availability of in-app purchases by storefront.

Periodically, Apple updates prices in certain regions based on changes in taxes and foreign exchange rates. This is done using publicly available exchange rate information from financial data providers to help ensure prices for in-app purchases stay equalised across all storefronts.

Currently, developers can adjust pricing at any time to react to tax and foreign currency adjustments. Coming in 2023, developers with paid apps and in-app purchases will be able to set local territory pricing, which will not be impacted by automatic price adjustments.

Overall, these newly announced tools, which will begin rolling out immediately and continue throughout 2023, are designed to create even more flexibility for developers to price their products while staying approachable to the users Apple serves worldwide.