It’s Simple

If you’ve set up Face ID or Touch ID on your device for in-app purchases, it’s hard to overstate how incredibly easy it is to buy something within an app. In fact, it’s so easy that this is one area in which Apple’s payment system offers a huge benefit to developers as well, since it encourages far more purchases — and far more impulse purchases — than a direct developer payment system might.

Of course, as we noted above, developers could build a direct payment system that might be even easier (arguably too easy) for users to make recurring purchases, but users would still have to start by signing up for an account and entering their credit card or other payment information, and of course that would need to be done with every single app you plan to make regular in-app purchases in.

Further, if you’re concerned about security, you may want to avoid storing your credit card information with every random game developer that comes along, in which case you’ll be digging out your credit card to punch in the info every time you want to make a payment.

It’s a big tradeoff between security and convenience, but with Apple’s system, all of your payment information is securely on file, and it’s available for every app you happen to be using. To be fair, however, Apple could also address this by making Apple Pay available to developers for digital purchases, which would offer almost all of the same benefits.