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Apple's EU rewrite puts a 5% price on distribution outside the App Store
From 1 October 2026 the Core Technology Fee becomes a 5% Core Technology Commission on digital transactions in apps shipped outside the App Store, and more developers qualify to run a marketplace. For a real-money casino app, the interesting part is what Apple left alone.
Fee schedules are not where this desk usually starts a morning. This one reprices every route onto an iPhone in Europe that skips the App Store, and casino apps sit at an odd angle to it.
Apple’s 18 August note to developers moves every developer distributing in the EU onto a single set of business terms. The Core Technology Fee — a per-install charge aimed at developers Apple describes as reaching extraordinary scale — is replaced by the Core Technology Commission, which the note calls a simple 5% commission on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the App Store. The Initial Acquisition Fee and the Store Services Fee are eliminated. Commission rates are adjusted across the App Store, alternative payments and alternatively distributed apps. And the qualifications for operating an alternative app marketplace, or distributing an app over the web, are being widened. The note dates those key updates to 1 October 2026.
Why a casino app reads this sideways
Real-money gaming already sits outside the payment stack the rest of the store lives in. Apple’s App Review Guidelines state at 5.3.3 that apps may not use in-app purchase to buy credit or currency for real money gaming of any kind, and at 5.3.4 that such apps must have the necessary licensing and permissions where the app is used, must be geo-restricted to those locations, and must be free on the App Store.
An operator’s cashier has therefore never run on Apple’s rails. Deposits are operator plumbing by rule, not preference. Whether a deposit is a “digital transaction” in the sense the new terms mean is not something the note addresses — it does not mention gambling anywhere — and that is a question for an operator’s lawyers, not a product desk.
The clause that actually moves something
The widened qualifications. Marketplaces and web distribution have been open in the EU since 2024; the bar for running one was the point. From 1 October, Apple’s support page lists several ways to clear it — a moderate Dun & Bradstreet stability score, a public listing, venture funding, the existing USD 1 million standby letter of credit, or a million first annual installs — and drops the requirement to be established in the EU. Anyone who has treated App Review as the only door should read that paragraph twice. Android has had the fork for years, and this desk took it apart a few days ago in store build versus direct download. The trade barely changes across platforms: you buy release speed and you lose the store listing, which is the only public maintenance record most operators keep anywhere.
Two hedges to close. This is an EU change; what a phone can install still varies by jurisdiction, and nothing here alters where an app may lawfully be offered. And 1 October is a date on a schedule, not a fact on the ground. Terms move; this one reads as it does as of this writing.