reversal

Apple’s New Stance: Claiming 30% of Teacher Donations for Insight Timer Meditation App

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The CEO of meditation app Insight Timer, Christopher Plowman, is frustrated. That’s what happened with Insight Timer, a popular meditation app with around 25 million installs and 3 million monthly active users. Because Insight Timer doesn’t take a cut of users’ donations to favorite teachers, those donations shouldn’t be subject to Apple’s commission — or so Plowman believed. Insight Timer implemented the feature using Stripe as the payment provider on the backend, as the rule permits. During the time the commission-free donations feature was live, Insight Timer’s users donated roughly $100,000 per month to the app’s teachers, Plowman says.