PocketGamer.biz reports that the Ninth Circuit has reversed their initial granting of the stay, instead now granting Epic’s motion for reconsideration on the stay. The article goes on to quote Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney stating that “Apple’s delaying tactics have come to an end.”

Now the case will return to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for additional determinations regarding Apple’s fees.

The original ruling was released on April 30, 2025, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers declaring that Apple’s anti-steering policies for purchases outside of apps are anticompetitive and to be discontinued. That was to be effective immediately at the time the ruling was released, but various requests and appeals from Apple have affected the ruling’s application. A request by Apple for stay was initially denied in June 2025, but PocketGamer.biz reports that the court had temporarily paused the ruling early this month. Epic challenged the pause, which resulted in this new reversal and the court stating that Apple had not sufficiently shown how the original ruling would cause them irreparable harm.

The original ruling can be read as linked from the PocketGamer.biz article linked above. 

About FastSpring

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! 

Learn more about FastSpring for mobile apps or FastSpring for games. 

The post News: Apple Loses Stay Against Mandate in Epic Case appeared first on FastSpring.

The Mobile Apps Unlocked conference will include breakout tracks, an executive series, Women in Mobile features, a dedicated space for founders, the newest tech and startups, and two all new features: braindates of curated peer-driven roundtables to spark meaningful conversations, and premium upgrade kickoff summits on topics such as indie dev, gaming, and growth strategy. 

Where to Get Tickets

If you’re ready to attend but still need tickets, check out the MAU registration page to see badge registration packages, buy your tickets, and opt in to upgrades like MAU Clubhouse access or a Kickoff Summit.

How to Connect With FastSpring

The FastSpring team will be ready to chat about app-to-web and D2C monetization at booth 528. If you’re ready to explore new monetization methods for your mobile app or game, FastSpring offers the expertise and solutions to help you succeed in today’s competitive market. 

To get a head start on scheduling a 1:1 session or product demo to happen in person at the event, request a personalized demo here.

FastSpring is how mobile app makers and gaming studios sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post FastSpring Is a Sponsor at MAU Las Vegas 2026 appeared first on FastSpring.

Your payments infrastructure is the foundation that determines whether you can scale globally, retain customers, and actually make money on each transaction. AI app builders face unique monetization challenges — from evolving regulations and taxes to the potential for more frequent chargebacks — that require more than a basic payment processor can solve for.

Below, we walk through:

• The SaaS fundamentals every AI app business needs to master.
• Monetization challenges unique to AI businesses.
• How to monetize a web app versus a mobile app.
• How FastSpring can help.

FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT/GST and sales tax compliance, consumer payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time building groundbreaking AI products! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Start With SaaS Fundamentals

At their most basic, the majority of AI apps are still fundamentally SaaS businesses. Whether it’s a monthly subscription to your writing assistant or an annual plan for your analytics platform, the majority of AI tools run on recurring revenue.

So while you may be selling AI services instead of project management software, the core monetization principles are similar to those of subscription businesses.

Before diving into AI-specific challenges, you should nail the basics — things such as:

• Communicating well with customers around subscription terms, payments, and any changes to your business or delivery model.
• Managing and mitigating churn.
• Choosing a payment provider.

But subscriptions come with complexity. You also need to handle free trial conversions, manage failed payments through dunning processes, and deal with upgrades, downgrades, and cancellations.

Companies that have navigated this model (such as FastSpring customer Stardock) know you need a payment partner built specifically for subscription management — not just one that can process one-time charges.

Things to Consider When Selling Software or Apps Globally

When you’re selling AI apps worldwide, you need to solve several problems simultaneously:

Preferred payments and checkout that vary by region. Localized payment methods are critical for conversion. Customers expect to see prices in their currency and be able to pay using familiar methods. Customers in the U.S., for example, expect to see Apple Pay and Google Pay, while customers in Brazil prefer to pay with Pix, and customers in India want to use UPI.

Global tax calculation and remittance. If you’re selling digital services to customers based in the EU, you need to collect VAT at each buyer’s local rate and file those taxes accordingly. In the U.S., sales tax requirements vary state by state, and some states even let individual counties or cities set their own rates and rules. Each requires separate filing. Handling this yourself means registering with tax authorities in, potentially, hundreds of jurisdictions. Plus, you’re liable for any fines or penalties resulting from doing so incorrectly.

Data and platform governance. You need to process payment data securely according to regional requirements, meet data residency rules in certain jurisdictions, and maintain PCI compliance. These aren’t optional — they’re legal requirements that can shut you down or cost you hefty penalties if not followed.

Why You Want a Merchant of Record (Not Just a Payment Processor)

When choosing how to handle payments, your first and crucial choice is whether to use a basic payment service provider (PSP) or partner with a merchant of record (MoR).

A payment service provider (such as Stripe) gives you the tools to process transactions, but you remain legally responsible for every transaction. You’re in charge of calculating, collecting, and remitting taxes — in every jurisdiction where your customers live — and you carry the liability for any fraud. (Stripe is launching an MoR service, but how it will perform is still unknown.)

A merchant of record, on the other hand, becomes the legal seller of your product. FastSpring is an MoR, so we assume liability for transactions — meaning you can spend less time worrying about managing taxes and chargebacks and more time building a great product.

As the liable party for the sale, an MoR such as FastSpring handles:

• Global tax compliance. You don’t need to figure out VAT rates across EU countries, navigate state-by-state sales tax rules in the U.S. (and in some cases even city-by-city variations), or file returns in those jurisdictions. An MoR automatically calculates, collects, and remits those taxes for you.
• Consumer support for payment issues. When someone’s card declines or they have a billing question, your MoR’s support team handles it.
• Fraud prevention and risk management. Using a simple payment service provider and acting as your own merchant of record could lead to less financial industry credibility, as AI services are often perceived as riskier than other tech verticals — and in turn, that could lead to lower approval rates. Conversely, the established credibility of an experienced merchant of record such as FastSpring (with over two decades of experience!) helps improve transaction approval rates, which means higher revenue and less headaches.
• Checkout and payment localization. Instantly offer global payment localization including currency conversion, checkout translation, global tax management, and localized payment processing.
• Global compliance. Your MoR maintains PCI-DSS certification, data protection regulations, and customer authentication requirements so you don’t have to. Learn more in FastSpring’s Trust Center.

FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT/GST and sales tax compliance, consumer payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time building groundbreaking AI products! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Questions to Ask When Evaluating Payment Solutions

Before committing to a payment solution — be it a payment processor or merchant of record — ask these questions to help you evaluate:

• Does it handle global tax collection and remittance automatically, or do you need to register, collect, and file in every jurisdiction where your customers live?
• Which payment methods are supported? Can customers in your target market(s) use their preferred options?
• How does it handle subscription management? What about usage-based or metered billing? Does it offer a portal for customers to self-manage subscriptions, billing, and payment methods on file?
• Does providing consumer payment support fall to you or to your payment provider?
• Does it integrate with your existing tech stack?
• What are your actual, all-in costs — including processing fees, tax filing, compliance management, and operational overhead? 

What Makes AI Different: Unique Monetization Challenges

Once you’ve nailed the fundamentals for subscription-based businesses, you can begin to grapple with the unique challenges of monetizing an AI app.

Operating in a Young, High-Growth Market = Constant Change

AI companies are scaling globally faster than almost any previous software category. You’re not gradually expanding into new markets over several years — you’re able to serve customers worldwide pretty much from day one.

This creates challenges that more mature software categories simply didn’t face when they were at the same stage. Burgeoning AI companies are now faced with:

• Regulatory landscapes that vary dramatically by region, especially as they apply to digital services businesses. Evolving tax regulations (especially on digital goods or services) create compliance requirements that change based on where your customers are located — and these regulations will continue to emerge, grow, and evolve across the globe. For example, in 2024, five U.S. states simplified their criteria for tax nexus, which meant more businesses might meet the criteria for nexus sooner than they expected to — including digital goods businesses. And in 2025, the Philippines extended its VAT legislation to cover digital services supplied by foreign companies to consumers in the Philippines. If you use an MoR such as FastSpring, the MoR will worry about staying up to date with those types of regulations so you don’t have to.
• Evolving customer expectations and pricing norms. Unlike established software categories where pricing patterns are well understood, AI pricing is more fluid. Customers aren’t yet sure what they should pay, and you may not be sure what you should charge. To quickly and easily pivot your pricing as needed, choose a payment partner with agile pricing tools. For instance, FastSpring’s flexible Store Builder Library makes it easy for software and app sellers to update their product pricing quickly.
• Overly cautious payment processors. As we mentioned above, because the category is new and patterns aren’t established, some payment processors may be more likely to treat AI as high-risk. But since FastSpring processes billions of dollars across numerous software categories and has been for 20+ years, partnering with us means that you’ll benefit from better approval rates. Banks see transactions coming from a known, trusted entity with a proven track record, not an unproven AI startup.
• Technical challenges with usage-based billing. Unlike SaaS products that have been more commonly monetized with traditional monthly or annual subscriptions, AI services are particularly well served by usage-based billing, so support for that feature is something you’ll likely want from a monetization partner. If you want to be able to charge users in combination with real-time metering and tracking of usage, your backend needs to integrate with your payment systems. FastSpring supports usage-based billing through API integration and webhooks.

Monetizing AI Web Apps vs. AI Mobile Apps

Your monetization strategy will differ depending on whether you’re building a web app, a mobile app, or both.

AI Web Apps: The Direct Approach

Web-based AI apps have built-in advantages for monetization:

• No mandatory iOS and Android platform fees.
• Full control over the customer relationship.
• Direct access to first-party customer data.

To make web monetization work, you need:

• An optimized checkout experience with multiple payment methods, localized currencies, and trust signals that convince customers you’re legitimate and secure.
• A subscription management portal where customers can self-serve to upgrade, downgrade, view usage, update payment methods, and access their billing history.
• Integration flexibility through APIs for usage-based billing, webhooks for entitlements, and backend system connections that tie everything together.

FastSpring’s JavaScript Store Builder Library lets you quickly create a branded, seamless checkout experience that feels native to your app environment, while handling all the back-end complexity for you.

AI Mobile Apps: The App2Web Opportunity

If you’re building a mobile AI app, you’re facing 15-30% platform fees that eat into your margins. For AI apps with high compute costs, losing nearly a third of revenue to platform fees can strain the calculus at best  —  or make the economics totally unworkable at worst.

But that’s the cost of doing business with iOS and Android, right?

Not necessarily.

With app2web and web2app monetization strategies, you can sell an AI app outside popular app stores. You can recover some of that lost revenue by building a web store to monetize via the web and offering customers some kind of incentive — discounts, upgrades, in-app usage bonuses, etc. — for buying directly from you.

By doing so, you:

• Minimize the transactions on which you incur those hefty commission fees.
• Gain access to valuable first-party customer data that enables smarter acquisition campaigns, personalized promotions, and better lifecycle marketing.
• Improve margins, which is crucial when you’re paying for compute on every transaction.

While regulations around in-app steering and promotion of outside payment options vary from region to region and are ever evolving, you can always:

• Distribute your product through a web store. Selling your app’s solution directly to your consumers through your own store is an increasingly common and effective monetization strategy.
• Market your web store outside the app through social media, Discord communities, Reddit threads, email campaigns, and other channels where you aren’t restricted by app store rules.
• Build a web presence for existing users, and incentivize web store visits through exclusive offers or better pricing.

Making User Acquisition Smarter With First-Party Data

When you monetize through the web, you unlock first-party data that holds the power to supercharge your user acquisition strategy.

You can track attribution accurately, understanding which campaigns drive conversions.

You gain access to email addresses, payment preferences, referral sources, and session behavior — data points that enable sophisticated segmentation.

Then you can turn that valuable data into:

• Localized user acquisition strategies with geographic and behavioral segmentation, region-specific pricing and promotions, and language/payment method optimization.
• Targeted social campaigns where you build custom audiences from web purchasers, create lookalike audiences based on high-intent users, and retarget with actual conversion data instead of guesswork.
• Email marketing automation that drives users to web purchases, re-engages lapsed customers, and converts free users to paid plans.

Monetize Your AI App With FastSpring

FastSpring is built specifically for digital-first businesses that need to monetize globally, without getting bogged down building their own global payments infrastructures — or cobbling them together via disparate payment tools.

Our platform offers:

• Complete merchant of record services covering global tax compliance across 200+ jurisdictions, local payment methods and currencies, fraud prevention and risk management, and PCI compliance and data security.
• AI-friendly billing capabilities including out-of-the-box subscription management, flexible product catalog management, multiple pricing models (flat, tiered, hybrid), and support for usage-based billing (with proper integration).
• Developer-first integration through RESTful APIs for backend connections, webhooks for real-time event notifications, our JavaScript Store Builder Library, integration with RevenueCat for mobile apps, and backend integration for usage-based billing.
• Customizable checkout experiences with branded checkout; your choice of embedded, pop-up, or web storefront experiences support for trials, coupons, and promotions; and management of multiple subscription tiers.
• Fast implementation with quick setup for standard configurations, flexibility for complex requirements, pre-existing  compliance infrastructure, and the ability to focus your engineering resources on AI instead of payments.

FastSpring helps AI app developers navigate the complexity of global monetization and scale successfully. We’ve spent over 20 years helping digital-first companies grow, and we’ve built our platform specifically for businesses like yours.

FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT/GST and sales tax compliance, consumer payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time building groundbreaking AI products! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post AI Monetization: How AI App Builders Can Handle Pricing, Global Expansion, and Compliance appeared first on FastSpring.

However, many founders quickly discover that the biggest hurdle to global growth isn’t product-market fit — it’s the structural drag of an entirely different set of Western administrative and regulatory requirements.

Companies are often caught off guard by the technical requirements and administrative realities. Moving into the West is not just about switching currencies; it’s a fundamental shift in how you manage your customer lifecycle and your business’s legal footprint.

Every new market demands its own web of legal entities, localized contracts, domestic banking, and tax registrations. That means that a lean, engineering-led startup can quickly become bogged down in legal and finance operations.

Based on FastSpring’s own internal data and our experience helping thousands of sellers scale, here are six proven strategies to navigate the high-stakes transition from APAC into Western markets.

FastSpring is how companies in APAC enter the western market online and in more places around the world. We handle every payment need — from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more — so your business can go farther, faster. We’re also the leading merchant of record for global software companies, powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great software. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

1. Leverage the Merchant of Record (MoR) Model

Selecting the right financial architecture is the most critical decision an APAC seller can make when selling beyond their home region. For many, the merchant of record (MoR) model provides a shortcut through the bureaucratic hurdles that typically accompany international growth. The MoR serves as the legal entity responsible for every transaction, allowing your team to focus on the product experience while the MoR handles the heavy lifting of global commerce.

• Immediate Market Entry: An MoR eliminates the need for APAC companies to establish local legal entities in the U.S. or Europe, enabling global expansion in days rather than months. Entity setup is not just a one-time cost — it creates ongoing legal, financial, and operational overhead.
• Compliance Outsourcing: The MoR handles the calculation, collection, and remittance of sales taxes and VAT, and it assumes the risk for fraud and chargebacks. And while taxes are very important, this is also critical  for companies using traditional PSPs, because it is just one part of a much bigger operational burden.

2. Meet Digital Goods Regulations in Europe

Europe has moved aggressively to standardize the digital economy, introducing frameworks that require absolute precision in data handling and tax reporting. Navigating these rules requires a proactive approach to ensure your checkout process remains both compliant and conversion-friendly. 

The following recent and ongoing mandates represent a hard line for international sellers, where universal requirements have replaced previous exemptions for smaller companies. 

• VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA): As of Jan. 1, 2025, previous VAT registration thresholds have been eliminated. Every B2C digital sale, no matter how small, is now a taxable event that must be reported through the One Stop Shop (OSS) system.
• The EU Data Act: Starting in September 2025, European customers have a “cancel anytime” right for cloud services, allowing them to terminate contracts with two months’ notice regardless of legacy terms. Providers must also ensure data portability, and by early 2027, all “switching fees” will be prohibited.
• Privacy as a Trust Factor: Beyond legal mandates such as GDPR, 2026 marks a shift toward “Privacy by Design.” Western buyers increasingly treat data transparency as a competitive requirement, so showing clear, auditable trails for data residency and automated decision-making is no longer just a legal hurdle but a primary driver of customer trust.

3. Navigate US Tax and Subscription Enforcement

The United States market is currently defined by complex state and federal regulations. Success in the U.S. requires a keen eye on shifting state legislation and a commitment to clear, accessible user terms that protect your business from regulatory scrutiny. 

Balancing these local tax obligations with federal consumer protection rules is essential for any APAC brand looking to establish a long-term presence.

• The Nexus Maze: Many U.S. states now impose sales tax on digital downloads and SaaS. For example, starting July 1, 2025, Maryland enacted a 3% sales tax specifically on technology services.
• Subscription Transparency: The FTC continues to aggressively enforce subscription transparency under the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA). Companies must offer simple, accessible cancellation options and clear disclosures about auto-renewal terms or risk significant penalties.
• Data Minimization: In line with the FTC’s focus on consumer protection, Western brands are shifting toward “data minimization”: the practice of only collecting what is strictly necessary. For APAC companies accustomed to data-rich “super-app” models, adopting a lean data approach is essential to avoid the multi-million-dollar settlements that are common under U.S. state privacy laws such as California’s CCPA.

4. Bridge the Gap Between Design and UX

APAC and Western customers often operate on different visual logic. While many high-growth Asian interfaces thrive on information density (such as surfacing multiple options, promotions, and data points all at once to show value), Western users typically favor minimalism and progressive disclosure. In the U.S. and EU, consumers don’t view a cluttered UI as feature-rich; instead, they perceive it as overwhelming and even spammy.

Here are a few tips on how to design for these audiences as you expand your business:

• Design for Focus, Not Completeness: Western SaaS buyers prioritize speed and ease. They expect a clean, minimalist layout with a single, clear call-to-action (CTA). In Western markets, whitespace is a functional tool for guiding the eye; removing it can lead to higher bounce rates.
• The Trust of Transparency: While APAC buyers often build trust through multi-sensory engagement, Western buyers build trust through visual clarity. This includes clear typography, a subdued color palette (moving away from high-energy reds and golds), and a direct, step-by-step onboarding flow that reveals features only as needed.
• Actionable Adjustment: Audit your marketing site and product dashboard for visual noise. Shift from a high-density, all-in-one layout to a streamlined experience that highlights one specific outcome at a time. This reduces the mental effort required for a Western buyer to say “yes” to your product.

5. Optimize Payment Performance and Risk

Cross-border payment performance is a silent variable that can either accelerate your growth or quietly drain your revenue through high decline rates. Friction at the point of purchase is often the result of poorly localized payment methods, or of inadequate fraud management that flags legitimate international buyers. 

For APAC companies, the most significant hurdle is often infrastructure: transitioning from a region where digital wallets and real-time payments are the primary engine of commerce to Western markets that remain deeply rooted in one-click payment systems.

• Local Optimization: Adding local payment methods (such as iDEAL in the Netherlands) can increase checkout conversion rates by up to 30%. Successful brands use dynamic checkouts that automatically detect a user’s location to display relevant currencies and billing frequencies.
• Managing Risk: Fraud and risk are harder to manage internationally. For example, while India’s UPI transactions are generally irreversible, Western credit cards offer robust consumer protections that make disputes easy. Utilizing an MoR can help mitigate this by assuming the legal and financial risk for fraud and chargebacks, protecting your bottom line from the volatility of international payment disputes.

6. Implement Advanced Pricing Strategies

Simply converting your home-market pricing into USD or EUR is rarely a winning strategy. To truly capture the market, APAC brands must adopt sophisticated pricing models that reflect the actual purchasing power and billing expectations of Western customers. These adjustments aren’t just cosmetic — they’re data-backed methods for increasing the lifetime value of every user you acquire.

• Purchasing Power Parity (PPP): Universal pricing often fails. SaaS companies that implement PPP-adjusted pricing — reflecting local economic conditions — see up to 18% higher growth rates and 25% higher revenue per customer.
• Annual vs. Monthly Billing: While monthly retention in Asia often hovers around 75% compared to 85%+ in the West, annual subscription retention is nearly identical globally. Understanding how customers like to buy (e.g., promoting annual plans) can help stabilize revenue and offset higher Western acquisition costs.

Scale Efficiently With FastSpring

Global expansion can get expensive quickly when each new market adds more internal complexity. FastSpring handles the global checkout, tax management, and regulatory compliance so you can focus on building your SaaS or software business rather than managing administrative overhead.

Ready to scale your SaaS beyond borders? Schedule a demo today.

The post 6 Proven Strategies for APAC Companies to Successfully Enter Western Markets appeared first on FastSpring.

Yet, there is conversation in the market that enterprise SaaS growth is beginning to slow. Finding new ways to grow can be especially hard for large companies that already have many subscribers, or which are chasing growth through new subscription services in addition to their usual offerings. 

The big question remains: How do you overcome the complex financial and technical hurdles of doing business globally? 

Spoiler alert: Global enterprise growth has an “easy button” with a merchant of record. Let’s take a look at how this powerful payment platform model solves enterprise-grade headaches.

FastSpring is how Enterprise game companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need — from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more — so your business can go farther, faster. We’re also the leading merchant of record for global software companies, powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great software. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Enterprise Global Expansion = High Stakes, Higher Friction

Enterprise leaders currently face three primary challenges that prevent them from capturing international market share:

1. High Investment and High Risk in Emerging Markets: You know the opportunity is massive, but the investment required to build local entities, hire tax experts, and establish banking relationships is astronomically high. While North America remains the largest market, Asia-Pacific is now the fastest-growing region globally, with a 24.6% CAGR in virtual fitness as an example. Effectively capturing new users in this space requires native options for buyers or local entities, but the risk of getting it wrong in a regulated market often stalls expansion plans before they begin.
2. The Architecture Gap: You need an enterprise-grade payment architecture that is resilient, localized, and compliant. However, correctly building all of that takes significant time, money, and specialized experience. Most organizations try to solve this with a domestic-only infrastructure, resulting in the “entity gap”: a state in which your regional web traffic is ready to buy, but sales can’t proceed because you don’t support local payment methods or don’t have local entities, leading to high cross-border decline rates.
3. The Need for Flexibility: You want the ability to adjust your rollout based on real-time data without incurring unexpected costs or risk. Traditionally, capturing 100% of market potential in regions such as India, Brazil, or Indonesia has required permanent local subsidiaries, which take years to establish. But you need the flexibility to test markets without being locked into analog-era banking setups that make it difficult to pivot.

These challenges can make it exceedingly complex or slow to expand into new global markets, even for well-established enterprise SaaS companies.

So What Is a Merchant of Record (MoR)?

Simply put, a merchant of record is a service provider that acts as your software’s reseller. While you maintain the brand experience and customer relationship, the MoR assumes the majority of the liability for the transaction.

The MoR model allows a company to “go live tomorrow.” Because the MoR already holds local entities and tax registrations across 200+ regions, you can leverage its infrastructure as your own. This is the strategic solution to the entity gap. For global enterprises, the barrier to international revenue is rarely a lack of demand — it’s the infrastructure.

Why Do Traditional Payment Providers Fail at Scale?

Most enterprises start with a standard payment service provider (PSP) such as Stripe, PayPal, or Square. However, as you expand into multiple regions (some with complex tax rules and regulations), the limitations of a PSP create a revenue ceiling:

• Missed Opportunities: It’s common for global leaders to see significant web traffic from regions like India or Mexico, only to find they can’t process a single transaction because they lack a local legal entity. One FastSpring customer was losing 20% of web traffic in India before implementing an MoR that accepted local payment methods, which are otherwise inaccessible without a local entity.
• Unnecessary Discounts: When internal infrastructure can’t support global growth, teams look for scrappy, alternative growth tactics that provide a quick revenue boost but which don’t maintain profit margins over the long term. A merchant of record provides a sustainable alternative to this by making it easy to unlock untapped revenue in new territories rather than slashing prices in existing markets.
• Administrative Burden: When your expansion plans reach your tax and legal departments, they’re often vetoed due to the complexity of managing local taxes and varying economic nexus laws (nexus is the defined threshold for tax liability on sales). 
• Tax Law Fragmentation: Beyond tax calculation, enterprises struggle with data fragmentation. A fragmented payment setup creates a reconciliation nightmare, where transaction data lives in silos. A robust MoR provides a single source of truth, ensuring that every transaction — regardless of currency or country — carries a consistent data schema that meets global KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) standards.

How to Scale With Speed and Flexibility

Every large company fears the need to “rip and replace” an existing infrastructure, even if that means sticking with a solution that’s not meeting their needs. Modern MoR solutions such as FastSpring address this through something called “headless deployment.” Let’s look at an example.

Avid, a leader in creative software, needed a global online payments solution that would leverage its recent investment in a new composable commerce stack. By implementing FastSpring as its MoR, they didn’t have to abandon their existing proprietary subscription engines or dunning logic. Instead:

• Avid managed the customer experience, subscriptions, and dunning.
• They layered FastSpring on top to manage the back-end: global payments, tax collection, and compliance.
• They went live in just three weeks and saw 4% of transactions come in through newly added payment options such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which supports long-term retention through buyer-friendly payment methods. 

This headless approach is critical for organizations using middleware platforms for orchestration and entitlements. Instead of a brittle, hard-coded integration, an enterprise-grade MoR uses webhooks and robust APIs to push real-time transaction data into your data lake or BI tools (like Snowflake or Tableau). This enables real-time revenue recognition, a necessity for both public companies and those preparing for an exit.

That’s how you scale without friction.

Even Your Back-Office Team Will Rejoice

Internal tax and finance teams are often the strongest skeptics regarding global expansion. An MoR turns these skeptics into advocates by providing:

• Liability Offloading: The MoR is responsible for calculating, collecting, and remitting all global taxes. If you get audited in Indonesia, the MoR handles it — not your internal team.
• One Report to Rule Them All: Instead of reconciling thousands of transactions across dozens of currencies and banks, your finance team receives a single, consolidated payment and a clean data set.
• ERP Integration: Leading MoR solutions such as FastSpring provide data that flows seamlessly into SAP Commerce, S/4HANA, and other enterprise backends, ensuring the cycles of planning, execution, and analysis are always data-driven and efficient.

This isn’t just about a CSV export — it’s about automated GL mapping. Leading MoR solutions allow you to map transaction types directly to your internal chart of accounts (COA). This turns a week-long, manual month-end close into an automated process, reducing human error and ensuring that your ERP sub-ledgers are always in sync with your actual cash flow.

Lessons From the Field: Navigating LATAM and APAC

Enterprise expansion often fails in these regions due to the infrastructure barrier. According to a Baymard study, businesses that enable regionally preferred payment methods see 21% higher growth rates than those that don’t.

Treating a Brazilian or Indian transaction as “cross-border” by routing it through a U.S. or EU bank is a recipe for involuntary churn. For a local bank, a foreign-processed transaction poses a security risk, leading to higher decline rates.

With an MoR as your local legal entity, the transaction stays “in-country.” This shift doesn’t just lower fees; it fundamentally stabilizes your leaky funnel by ensuring valid customers aren’t blocked by banking security flags.

Similarly, forcing a mobile-first economy into a credit-card-only checkout creates another barrier. While credit cards dominate the West, they are the exception in high-growth regions. 

In India for example, credit card penetration is under 5%, while UPI (Unified Payments Interface) accounts for over 75% of digital retail transactions. Similarly, in Brazil, Pix has surpassed 150 million users. It’s not necessarily about having more payment methods; it’s about having the right ones.

Bridging the Entity Gap for Global Growth

The transition from a domestic success story to a global enterprise powerhouse is no longer a matter of simply “turning on” new regions. For the modern SaaS leader, the merchant of record model is more than a compliance shortcut — it’s a strategic lever for revenue operations. It represents the end of the entity gap, allowing your organization to:

• Reclaim Lost Revenue: Stop losing 20% or more of your international traffic to avoidable cross-border declines.
• Decouple Growth from Headcount: Scale into 200+ countries without hiring a team of tax experts or managing dozens of local entities.
• Empower the Back Office: Transform your finance and tax departments by offloading the liability and complexity of global nexus and tax laws.

Global expansion in 2026 isn’t about being present in every market — it’s about being native to every market. By partnering with an MoR like FastSpring, you ensure that your infrastructure is as agile as your code.

The demand is there. The customers are ready. It’s time to close the gap.

You built the software. Let FastSpring build your global payments strategy.

FastSpring is how Enterprise companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need — from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more — so your business can go farther, faster. We’re also the leading merchant of record for global software companies, powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great software.

Ready to try FastSpring? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Headache-Free Global Growth: The Enterprise Guide to Merchant of Record appeared first on FastSpring.

• App2web flows enable mobile app and mobile game developers to steer users to their own external web store to complete transactions outside the “walled gardens” of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.
• Doing so allows developers to avoid hefty commissions paid to app stores — but also to more directly own their relationship with users and gather invaluable first-party data.
• Steer Safe™ from FastSpring offers a quick, simple way to launch app2web with secure, localized checkout and the most popular global payment methods.

For over a decade, the mobile app economy was defined by the walled gardens of two tech behemoths: Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. For developers of digital-first businesses — including mobile apps and mobile games — hefty commission fees of 15% to 30% were par for the course, a necessary evil to gain access to these marketplaces and consumers who frequent them.

Today, that’s changing. A series of landmark legal rulings and shifting regulations around the world are breaking down those walls, making mobile monetization outside of app stores possible and offering developers a way around those hefty fees.

App2web flows, which steer users from within an app to your external web store to complete a purchase, are a big part of that.

Below, we cover:

• The regulatory and legal landscape — and why app2web is emerging now.
• The benefits of app2web.
• A step-by-step guide to launching app2web in the U.S.
• In-app steering with Steer Safe™ from FastSpring.
• How to leverage your App2Web first-party data.
• How to monetize with web2app in addition to app2web.
• Creating one connected commerce experience with FastSpring.
• Frequently asked questions about mobile app app2web monetization.

Prefer to watch a video presentation about app2web monetization? Our experts presented an earlier version of this content at a Business of Apps event in Oct. 2025. Watch the full video here.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT and sales tax compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The Shifting Regulatory Landscape Around App Stores and Mobile Monetization

The transition to web-based monetization is powered by a number of legal decisions that have redefined what steering looks like for mobile developers. These rulings have effectively legalized and protected the practice of guiding users to a website to find a better deal or additional options.

• Epic v. Apple (U.S.): In April 2025, rulings established that Apple cannot prevent iOS developers in the United States from including links in their apps that direct users to an external website for payments. Further decisions clarified that Apple cannot charge developers commission fees on external purchases made outside the App Store.
• Epic v. Google (U.S.): Similar steering capabilities for Android apps in the United States became available in late 2025 after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Google’s request for a stay on the deadline to open the Google Play Store to alternative options by October 22, 2025.
• Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act: This regulation, which went into effect in December 2025, unlocks steering on both iOS and Android platforms for developers in the Japanese market.

These changes mean that, for the first time, you can explicitly message users in-app about better deals or exclusive content available on your own web store without fear of account suspension.

Why Go App2Web? (Hint: It’s About More Than Fees)

While saving on marketplace commissions is a significant driver, they aren’t the only reason top-tier developers want to sell outside app stores. In a 2025 survey of mobile gaming companies, top reasons for adopting a direct-to-consumer (D2C) web store included:

• Improved access to customer data and insights.
• More control over pricing and promotions.
• Improved brand visibility and loyalty.
• The opportunity to build a direct relationship with players.

Read the results of our entire gaming industry survey here.

The Value of First-Party Data

When a user transacts through a traditional app store, the marketplace owns the relationship, often providing the developer with anonymized data only. By moving the transaction to your web store, you capture the most valuable piece of data for any business: the customer’s email address.

Having direct access to user data — including geography, platform, language, name, and purchase history — allows you to move from reactive to proactive marketing. You can implement automated onboarding flows, renewal reminders, and win-back campaigns to enhance adoption, promote loyalty, and mitigate churn.

Solving the Attribution Gap

One of the greatest challenges in mobile marketing is the attribution gap created by walled garden ecosystems. Web stores allow you to embed tracking pixels from platforms such as Meta and Google — so you can see exactly which ad campaigns drive paid conversions, rather than just app installs.

This feedback loop is essential for optimizing your ad spend, allowing you to double down on high-performing campaigns and create lookalike audiences based on your best customers.

Pricing and Bundling Flexibility

The web offers freedom and flexibility that app stores just can’t match. On your web store, you can experiment with tiered pricing, custom bundles, or loyalty rewards, with no requirement that they fit into Apple or Google’s rigid SKU structures.

For example, you might offer a “Buy Direct” bonus, such as offering a discounted subscription  or a month of free service, to incentivize the jump to your web store.

How to Launch App2Web in the US

Launching app2web monetization doesn’t require building a massive ecommerce platform. You can start with a simple, secure checkout loop that integrates with your existing back-end systems.

Step 1: Add In-App Buy Buttons

Place clear calls to action (CTA) buy buttons in appropriate places within your app or game — such as your paywall, your in-game store, or a settings menu — that link to your checkout experience or web store.

In the U.S., you can use explicit messaging such as “Buy direct and save” to guide users.

Step 2: Pass Dynamic URL Variables

To ensure the transition is seamless, your app needs to pass data over to your web store. When a user taps the Buy button, use dynamic URL variables to pass their User ID, product tokens, and authentication details to the back-end system.

This allows your web store to recognize the user instantly without requiring them to log in again and adding unnecessary friction to the checkout process. It helps you track who that person is, what they’re doing, and their entitlements.

Then you can use that data to leverage segmentation, for example, or to offer promotions or discounts as related to that user.

Step 3: Localized Web Checkout

With web checkout, you can control the design, data collection, and payment methods you accept. It doesn’t have to be complicated — it can be as simple as your logo, the product they’re purchasing, and the payment methods offered.

It’s crucial to offer localized payment methods that are familiar to your users in different jurisdictions. For example, U.S. users are familiar with mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which offer quick, seamless checkout for them. In Brazil, users may prefer Pix, while in India, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is more popular.

Beyond payment methods, your web checkout may also need to be translated into other languages and prices converted into the user’s currency.

Step 4: Communicate With Back-End Systems to Allow In-App Entitlements

Once the purchase is complete, your commerce platform sends a signal — typically via a webhook or API — to your back-end.

Your internal systems then update the user’s account and unlock the digital product or subscription. At the same time, a deep link redirects the user back to your app, where the purchase is reflected in near real-time — as few as 10-15 seconds.

In-App Steering With Steer Safe™ From FastSpring

In addition to circumventing app store fees and collecting user data, another key goal of the flow is driving value for your users. That means creating a smooth, secure loop where the user finishes their checkout on the web, your systems automatically sync, and the app reflects the purchase in near real-time.

If all of that sounds a bit complicated to pull off, FastSpring can help. Our approach to app2web steering — called Steer Safe™ — makes it simple for you to steer users from in-app experiences to secure, localized checkout, and back to your app, all in a matter of seconds. It’s a much faster and easier way to deploy app2web as soon as possible.

It’s back-end agnostic — meaning it works with whatever back-end system you’re using — and is available for both iOS and Android mobile apps.

Learn more about Steer Safe™ from FastSpring.

Leveraging Your App2Web First-Party Data

When you’re just operating in app stores, it can be very challenging to identify who your users are, collect their email addresses, and create a conversation with them. By using the app2web flow, you unlock a lot of that data.

Once you’ve established that direct line to your customers through your web store, you can transform your growth strategy from generic to highly personalized.

Ad Targeting and Retargeting

With a web store, you’re no longer flying blind. By connecting your first-party data to your ad platforms, you can:

• Identify high-value campaigns: Know which creative assets and which audiences are driving the most revenue.
• Automate targeting: Ad platforms like Google and Meta can automatically use this data — along with their own algorithms — to better target your ads to the users most likely to convert.
• Effective retargeting: Show ads specifically to users who visited your web store but didn’t complete a purchase.
• Build “lookalike” audiences: Upload your list of converted web buyers to find new users with similar characteristics.

Email Marketing

Your email list is your most direct channel for retention, and — as we mentioned above — email addresses are the most valuable piece of data you can collect via app2web.

When you connect this and other first-party data to your email marketing platform, you can easily tailor and target your email campaigns.

• Personalized onboarding: Send tutorials and tips based on the specific product or bundle they purchased.
• Automated renewals: Remind subscription users of upcoming renewals with a link to manage their account on the web.
• Win-back and re-engagement flows: If a user hasn’t logged in for 30 days, trigger an email offer with a web-exclusive discount to bring them back.
• Segmentation: Segment users to deliver the right message, to the right people, at exactly the right time.

Monetizing With Web2App In Addition to App2Web

Whether you’re in a region where app2web isn’t allowed, or you simply want to improve revenue and user acquisition, web2app is a valuable addition to your toolbox.

This flow creates a funnel through which you can drive user acquisition, and helps avoid fees on the app store. To do this, you’ll need a few parts: social ads or organic posts, a website landing page, and a checkout.

Instead of using the app store as your primary user acquisition channel, you can leverage paid social platforms like Meta, TikTok, or Google Search to send traffic directly to your website. Instead of being reliant solely on the app store listing, you can take ownership of the entire user journey.

When a user clicks on an ad, they land on a high-converting page you’ve designed without the distractions — or limitations — of the app store pages. This also allows you to implement other features like robust A/B testing, pixel tracking, and retargeting strategies that contribute to additional access to user data.

Then at checkout, you gain the benefit of bypassing the standard 15%-30% platform commissions and can offer features on your site that decrease customer churn, such as saved payment methods and account management. You can also offer flexible pricing, bundle products, or discounts that wouldn’t be otherwise feasible if you were paying the cut to the app store.

Once the transaction is finished, you’ll send your user to an app store page link to download and log in, where their purchase is already waiting for them.

Ultimately, this strategy transforms your app from a discovery-dependent product into a conversion-focused powerhouse, where you’re able to control user acquisition from channels outside of the app marketplaces while still keeping the flows that already work for you.

Other Web2App Tips

Funnels aren’t the only way you can improve user acquisition on your website with web2app. Below are a few more tips for how you can use it to improve website conversions and user acquisition:

Incentivizing the Web Visit

To encourage users to leave the app and visit your site, offer additional value that isn’t available in the mobile app interface:

• Additional free assets: Templates, PDFs, exclusive in-app themes, or resource libraries.
• Industry content: Educational content, industry insights, and tutorials.
• Site-exclusive events: Webinars, livestreams, Q&As, or site-exclusive challenges.
• Community: Forums, community showcases, leaderboards, etc.
• Loyalty rewards: Badges or loyalty currency for in-app purchases.
• Reports and tracking: Exportable data summaries and personalized dashboards.

How to Launch Web2App Store Flows

1. Create a product page with the products available to purchase for your customers. If you only offer a single product, this can be a single, simple page. For more extensive product catalogs, a full web store may work better.
2. Integrate the checkout experience into your product page as a simple pop-up checkout, for example, or a more customizable embedded checkout. A shopping cart feature may be worthwhile if you offer many products or add-ons.
3. Process user payments on your web store using Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other popular, preferred, and localized payment methods, depending on the jurisdictions where your users live.
4. Communicate with back-end systems via webhooks and APIs to allow in-app entitlements — confirm purchases, deliver subscriptions, unlock content, etc. — and send users back to the app as quickly as possible following a purchase.

When done well, checkout should feel like a part of a more holistic experience that users have with your brand. Ensuring the process is seamless and quick — and that the design is consistent across your app, web store, and checkout flow — will help guide users through the payment process and mitigate any drop-off or abandonment.

One Connected Commerce Experience With FastSpring

App2web isn’t a standalone channel or strategy. Think of it more like an additive layer to your existing app and web strategy.

Together, app2web and web2app flows unlock new revenue and richer first-party data. It’s not just about billing, but about developing a direct relationship with your users.

The question is no longer whether you should launch direct monetization on your website, but how quickly you can get it live to start owning your customer relationships. With FastSpring, it’s easier than ever to connect app2web and web2app flows to your app, helping you convert more, everywhere.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT and sales tax compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions About App2Web Monetization for Mobile Developers

What Is App2Web and How Does It Benefit Mobile Developers?

App2web flows enable mobile app and mobile game developers to steer users to their own external web shop to complete transactions outside the walled gardens of Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.

Benefits for developers include:

• Improved access to customer data and insights.
• More control over pricing and promotions.
• Improved brand visibility and loyalty.
• The opportunity to build a direct relationship with players.

Can I Steer iOS and Android Users to My Web Store?

As of this writing, direct and explicit steering is allowed for users in the U.S. and Japan.

For users outside these jurisdictions, developers can deploy web2app flows: Instead of linking directly to a payment page, you can steer users to non-payment pages — i.e., pages that provide some non-transactional value.

It’s less direct, but this strategy works as a one-two punch: you bring them to the web for content, and once they have an account, you can market the store to them directly.

Ready to try FastSpring? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post Beyond the App Store: A Guide to App2Web Mobile Monetization appeared first on FastSpring.

After a full day of full-funnel strategizing for user acquisition, retention, engagement, and more, round out the day with the AGS West Coast 808s After Party to continue the fun and the networking.

Session: How to Take Advantage of Epic vs. Apple and Launch App2Web Monetization ASAP

Join FastSpring’s Director of Demand Generation Jesse Paliotto along with Hiatus VP of Growth Jeff Wang and Activision Sr. Director of Mobile Marketing Elizabeth Burr for a panel discussion on mobile app monetization.

The panel will dive into the practical challenges of off-app monetization, from getting users to leave the app to converting them on the web and returning them seamlessly, and they’ll discuss how teams are balancing higher margins with conversion risk — including how to build flows that protect both the user experience and revenue.

Check out the panel at 12:10 p.m. 

Where to Get Tickets

To request your invitation to the conference, visit the App Growth Summit LA 2026 page.

How to Connect With FastSpring

Check out our panel discussion, or stop by our booth to talk to the FastSpring team about how you’re currently approaching monetization — and how we can help take your app growth to the next level!

Want to book a 1:1 session or product demo to happen in-person at the event? Request a demo here.

FastSpring is how mobile app makers and gaming studios sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post FastSpring Presenting at App Growth Summit LA 2026 appeared first on FastSpring.

• Mobile app marketplaces such as the Apple App Store and Google Play Store make app distribution easy, but they charge steep fees.
• There are a few important components to selling outside the app marketplaces, such as choosing a payments partner, setting up user accounts, and structuring your purchases and packages.
• A merchant of record such as FastSpring can make selling globally much easier for mobile app and game publishers.

If you’re not sure how to sell an app direct to consumer (also referred to as D2C or app2web) outside the app marketplaces — or if you’re looking for a new way to monetize your mobile app or game — you may be wondering what options you have.

Steep fees from platforms like the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store can understandably cause game developers and app creators to look beyond the convenience, discoverability, and ubiquity of traditional app marketplaces.

Historically, restrictions from the platform providers have made that difficult — but as a result of ongoing court cases along with the development of new laws and regulations, the mobile landscape is changing.

TL;DR: If you’re looking to sell outside Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, you may have more options than you thought.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• How mobile app marketplaces work and the fees they charge.
• How to sell outside app marketplaces and the tools you’ll need to do so.
• Legal and regulatory updates regarding app sales and monetization.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Note: Information in this article was validated at time of publishing and is subject to change.

How Mobile App Marketplaces Work

Making up over 99% of mobile OS market share globally, Android with the Google Play Store and iOS with the iPhone App Store have enjoyed a duopoly over mobile app distribution and mobile app ecommerce worldwide. While those markets are beginning to open up, it’s helpful to understand the business model that app marketplaces have traditionally worked under.

On the plus side, because major app marketplaces are used by basically every human on earth with a mobile phone, the ability to attract new users for your app or players for your game is unmatched.

Marketplaces make it easy and convenient for users to download and pay for new apps and in-app purchases through a marketplace and within an ecosystem they already trust, and with payment methods they’ve already saved to their account.

Marketplaces also make it easy for mobile app developers to distribute their apps. They manage important transaction factors such as varied payment methods and currencies, fraud, tech support related to the transaction, and collecting and paying sales taxes. 

But that ease of use can come at a steep price for developers.

Fees and Commissions Charged by Major App Marketplaces

Assuming your game or app is accepted by the mobile app store app review gatekeepers in the first place, the complete lack of competition ensures that the fees associated with sales via iOS and Google Play app stores are very high — usually around 15% on the first $1 million in sales annually and up to 30% on revenue streams exceeding $1 million per year.

That’s on top of the $99 per year membership fee required to join the Apple Developer Program, create your developer account, download Xcode, and access App Store Connect.

Those fees also apply to in-game purchases as well. This means that even if you intend to release a free app but monetize it using in-app purchases, you and/or your players and users will still be burdened by paying steep fees to the app stores.

Passing App Store Costs on to Consumers

Some apps have taken efforts to make it clear that at least a portion of high app store fees are being passed along directly to buyers, but that there are lower-cost options instead.

Adding Fees to Subscriptions Purchased via App Marketplaces

When Otter — an AI meeting agent and transcription app — revamped its pricing options in mid-2023, there was one particularly notable option for Pro plans: Paying for a yearly subscription via the Apple App Store or Google Play Store cost users an extra $10, increasing the price by about 8% from $119.99 to $129.99 USD.

To explain how users could avoid this upcharge, Otter placed a green “Tip” box just below the Otter Pro pricing grid, encouraging users to “Learn how to move your Apple App Store or Google Play Store subscription to Otter via Web.”

To address this pricing discrepancy more directly, the FAQ section at the bottom of the announcement page stated the higher price via app marketplaces “reflects the additional charges required to host the Otter.ai subscriptions on both Apple and Google’s app stores.” 

It went on to explicitly recommend users cancel their current Apple App Store or Google Play Store subscription and re-subscribe via Otter’s website.

At the time of this writing, it appears that pricing for Otter Pro is now the same whether the user signs up via the Play Store or via web directly from Otter.ai, but their help page (linked above) about how to switch to a web subscription is still up, and the page mentions two additional benefits besides savings: access to the Otter support team if you have any subscription issues, and easier account management with access to upgrade options that aren’t available in the app. 

Offering Discounts for Direct Purchases

Subsequently, game and app developers may opt to offer discounted prices to users if they purchase outside of the app via an external user account that’s linked back to the app.

Developers can advertise these kinds of discounts and user accounts on their websites or in the app, depending on app marketplace regulations and location. 

App devs make it easy for a user to sign up by simply opening the app on their phone, tapping a button to create a user account, and completing registration. 

Then users can easily make purchases from the developer’s website directly, for much less than they would pay if they made the same purchases within the app. (More on user accounts below.)

More App Developers Are Selling D2C

While there are many benefits to selling games and apps through the iOS App Store and Google Play, the downsides on pricing & fees and the limitations on game distribution mean that as court cases continue and new regulations open up the markets, more and more developers will be wondering how they can implement a D2C strategy for their app or game.

In fact, by the middle of 2025, the gaming industry leaders we surveyed were already using direct-to-consumer monetization at a rate of 57%, and when combined with those not yet using D2C but planning to within 12 months, about 83% of all those surveyed will be using it by mid-2026. 

Read more of the illuminating gaming industry survey results in our post, Massive Gaming D2C Survey From FastSpring and Omdia.

How to Sell Apps Outside App Marketplaces

In the Otter example above, even though Otter’s app is downloaded via the Apple App Store or the Android Play Store — and Otter was charging a higher price if users paid for their yearly Pro subscription via those stores — there was still a lower-cost option for their users: Downloading the app from one of the stores, but paying for their service on Otter’s own website using a different payment services provider (PSP).

This model is an example of the difference between distributing an app through the app marketplaces, and monetizing an app through the app marketplaces. 

Even if downloads of your app are captive to proprietary stores, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way users can pay for your service or features.

Here are some of the key things to consider when setting up your own app monetization option outside of major app marketplaces.

Choosing a Payment Provider

Step one is choosing how you’ll accept payments outside app marketplaces.

There are many options for payment services providers (PSP) and merchants of record (MoR) on the market that you can set up to take payments outside of device-captive app stores. 

But there is a key difference between payment services providers and merchants of record. 

A PSP helps businesses sell a product by handling the specialized services and back-end connections needed to do so (such as connecting payment gateways, payment processors, and a merchant account). 

An MoR like FastSpring does all that and more — from handling payment processing to taking on important responsibilities such as worrying about card brand rules, regulatory rules across jurisdictions, risk management and fraud prevention, handling refunds and chargebacks, sales taxes, VAT, and GST, and more. That includes calculating, collecting, and remitting taxes.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps!  Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Can I Just Use Stripe?

Before you jump to considering an even simpler and lower-cost PSP such as Stripe, note that it’s very simple — Stripe is not a merchant of record.

Because they do not assume the same responsibilities an MoR like FastSpring does, you will still be responsible for important tasks such as managing risk, dealing with chargebacks, and handling taxes. 

Stripe has multiple upgrades available to fill some of those gaps, but each upgrade package will continue to increase the price anyway. Learn more about how Stripe charges for their Tax upgrades in our article 2Checkout vs. Stripe vs. FastSpring: Comparing Payments, Taxes, and Platform Features (+ Pricing).

It can be very easy for SaaS companies and app businesses to outgrow Stripe, so it may be easier to start with a more robust merchant of record from the outset, particularly if you plan to grow quickly and/or serve customers globally.

FastSpring Steer Safe^TM Makes Web Purchases Very Easy for Mobile Users

For a super smooth purchase flow that sends app users from your app to your website and right back when the purchase is complete, FastSpring now has Steer Safe^TM, an approach to monetizing apps with the fastest, least-taps paths possible. 

Easily add purchase buttons or links directly in your mobile app or game, and securely pass player info, product info, and more to your FastSpring-powered checkout on the web. Then quickly return the user to the app to get right back to utilizing their purchase.

To learn more and even see gifs of the purchase process in action, check out our Steer Safe^TM posts about games on iOS, games on Android, or mobile apps on both iOS and Android.

Setting Up User Accounts

To connect purchases between your own checkout option and your app that was downloaded from an app marketplace, you’ll likely need some kind of user account system for users to track — and activate in-app — their purchases.

User accounts allow users to make purchases outside of the App Store or Play Store, then sign in to your app to see the purchase credited there.

In the case of FastSpring, we also provide consumer support to users. If they have any issues with their purchase or their purchase account, we’ll be there to help — making one less thing for you to worry about.

Structuring Purchases and Packages

Purchases tied to users’ accounts are often in the form of in-app currency or subscriptions.

In-App or In-Game Currency

To monetize your app using in-app or in-game currency, the currency is purchased using real money on your site and then redeemed in your app for in-app items, features, etc. 

In the case of many game apps, the apps use an in-game currency such as coins, gems, gold, or a unique fictional currency that users can redeem for bonuses within the game. The currency can usually be purchased in various packages, with web-exclusive pricing offered if users leave the app and buy straight from the game developer’s site.

Users can then check out with a typical online purchase experience, such as with FastSpring’s online checkout with built-in user experience and conversion optimization.

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, VAT and sales tax compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps! Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Subscriptions

Rather than individual purchases as needed, you may prefer to offer access to your app (or its premium services and functionality) via a subscription, often available monthly or yearly.

In the Otter example, besides a freemium option, Otter’s packages are available as monthly or annual subscriptions. 

FastSpring provides a wide variety of subscription management tools to help you monetize your mobile app, game, software as a service, or other digital products.

Items and Upgrades

Items and upgrades are yet another packaging option for monetizing your app. These can be independent of other options like subscriptions and in-app currency, or they can work in tandem with them.

In the case of Otter, which offers a freemium version of their service (either via web or using their app), upgrades such as more transcription minutes, team collaboration, and advanced export options help incentivize users to subscribe to their Pro and Business packages.

In the case of gaming apps, the possibilities are nearly endless — with exclusive items, characters, power-ups, and more to motivate players to shop via the website and redeem in the app. 

Legal and Regulatory Updates Regarding App Sales and Monetization

If you’re not familiar with the recent and ongoing legal challenges that could affect both Google and Apple’s stores in some way, there have been quite a few around the world, including in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Brazil.

The EU’s Digital Marketing Act (DMA)

In Europe, the EU’s Digital Marketing Act (DMA) is aimed at what the Commission called “gatekeepers” (which includes Apple, Google, Meta, etc.), and the Commission began enforcing it in March 2024.

Apple has revised its App Store rules, giving developers more freedom and flexibility when it comes to monetizing — but this was after the company was charged with violating the DMA rules by not fully allowing steering.

Get the basics on the DMA and more helpful links here.

Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act Guidelines

The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) released the Mobile Software Competition Act Guidelines, which includes regulatory guidance in line with the EU’s DMA. The MSCA guidelines went into effect in December 2025 and address Apple and Google’s restricting of alternative app marketplaces, forced use of their own payment systems, and anti-steering & browser engine restrictions.

Epic Games’ Lawsuits in the US

After Epic Games used discounts to encourage its Fortnite users to use a different payment system instead of the app marketplaces, both Apple and Google subsequently removed Fortnite from their stores in 2020. Epic Games then separately sued both Apple and Google.

In the Apple case, judgments and appeals have been split between Epic and Apple. Of note, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in April 2023 that Apple’s prohibition against allowing app devs to send users to other non-App Store payment methods violated California’s Unfair Competition Law.

Appeals were made to the Supreme Court, but in January 2024, the Supreme court decided not to hear those appeals; read more about responses from Epic and Apple here. 

In response to requirements that the company permit developers to guide users toward alternative payment options outside the App Store (also known as “payment steering”), Apple put in place rules that required developers to report — and pay Apple a commission — on transactions processed elsewhere. But n April 2025, a U.S. judge ruled against Apple, preventing the company from charging commissions on external payments.

In the Google case, appeals also continue, but a December 2023 ruling found in favor of Epic on all counts, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in October 2025 against Google’s bid to delay required changes to the Play Store set to take effect later that same month.

Disclosure: FastSpring provided key evidence about alternative payment options in EPIC’s antitrust lawsuit against Google. Read more here.

US State-Led Cases

In Utah v. Google, 37 attorneys general (representing 21 million Americans) maintained that Google uses illegal, anticompetitive, and/or unfair business practices that restrict competition, drive up prices, and limit choices, all of which harm consumers that purchase games and other digital goods through the Google Play store. Read more about the Google case here.

Brazil’s Antitrust Regulation

After a 2022 complaint filed by MercadoLibre in both Brazil and Mexico — in which MercadoLibre took issue with Apple’s requirement that app developers must use Apple’s payment system for selling digital goods or services offered within the apps — Brazil’s antitrust regulation agency Cade stated in Nov. 2025 that Apple needed to lift restrictions regarding payment methods for in-app purchases. That included allowing links to other sites to help facilitate alternative payment options.

Frequently Asked Questions About Selling Outside the App Stores

Partner With FastSpring

If you’re looking for help selling your mobile app or video game directly to consumers, we can help.

FastSpring powers global D2C payments for game studios and app publishers. As a merchant of record, we provide a fully managed payment solution — including customizable checkout, fraud mitigation, and 100% automated sales tax and VAT compliance.

Interested? Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Thanks to Tony Markov for contributing to this article!

This post was originally published in Feb. 2024 and has been updated.

The post How to Sell a Mobile App or Game Outside App Stores appeared first on FastSpring.

Now, you’re looking outward. The goal is no longer just regional dominance; it is global expansion.

But selling software to a customer in Texas or Berlin is fundamentally different from selling to one in Rio. Many high-growth LATAM founders fall into the trap of thinking global expansion is just a matter of translating their website and adding a few currency options.

The reality is that once you cross borders, the rules of the game change completely. You’re suddenly exposed to a tangled web of tax liabilities, cross-border payment friction, and operational headaches that can stifle your growth before it truly begins.

Here are the four hidden barriers to global scaling — and how savvy founders overcome them.

1. The Tax Trap

A common misconception among international founders is that your company’s location determines your tax liability. You might think, “”I’m a Brazilian company, so I follow Brazilian tax laws.”

Unfortunately, in the world of digital product sales, tax obligations are almost always determined by where your customer sits, not where you sit.

Here are just a few common examples:

• The U.S. Nexus Maze: If you sell to buyers in the United States, you aren’t just dealing with “U.S. tax.” You’re dealing with economic nexus. Nexus is the legal status you reach when you cross a specific sales threshold. Once you sell more than that amount in a jurisdiction, you must start collecting its local taxes. With rules varying by state, county, and even city, you could find yourself owing taxes in 50+ different jurisdictions, each with its own rates and filing requirements.
• The VAT Burden: Similarly, if you sell into the European Union, you are responsible for collecting Value-Added Tax (VAT) at the buyer’s country’s rate (e.g., 19% in Germany vs. 20% in France) and remitting it to the local authorities.

For a growing finance team, international taxes can be an administrative nightmare. You’re forced to either hire expensive international tax firms or risk audits and fines that could cripple your business.

2. The Payments Paradox

When you expanded within LATAM, you learned that offering trusted local methods like Pix or Mercado Pago was critical to regional success. It’s tempting to apply the same logic globally by adding every possible payment option to your checkout page.

However, an overwhelming number of payment methods can actually backfire, creating decision fatigue or even confusion — which lowers conversion rates.

A customer in the Netherlands wants to see iDEAL. A customer in the U.S. expects credit cards or Apple Pay. If a German buyer lands on your checkout and sees a list of irrelevant options intended for Brazilian or American shoppers, trust erodes immediately.

You don’t need more payment methods; you need a dynamic checkout experience — a system that automatically detects a user’s location and device and displays only the currencies and payment methods relevant to them.

3. The Leaky Funnel

It’s natural to assume that a conversion occurs when a customer clicks “Buy.” In reality, cross-border sales face hidden obstacles that silently kill conversions and erode margins.

First, you face false declines caused by a lack of local acquiring.

• What Is Local Acquiring? It’s the ability to process a payment through a bank in the buyer’s own country. Without it, your transaction looks “foreign” to the buyer’s bank, triggering security flags and declining valid customers. This creates involuntary churn: Your product works, the customer wants to pay, but the banking infrastructure rejects them.

Second, you face value erosion.

• What Is Value Erosion? Even when payments succeed, standard payment service providers (PSPs) often apply high foreign exchange (FX) fees on every transaction. You might be making the sale, but you aren’t capturing the full value of the revenue.

4. The Finance Burden

Selling globally is exciting for the sales team, but without a unified platform, it creates a resource drain on your back office.

The core problem is fragmentation.

• What Is Fragmentation? If you sell in USD, EUR, GBP, and JPY using standard PSPs, your finance team is forced to reconcile multiple merchant accounts, inconsistent report formats, and varying settlement dates.

What should be a simple month-end close turns into weeks of spreadsheet wrangling to consolidate data. This operational debt scales with your growth — the more you sell, the harder it becomes to report on it.

The Solution: A Merchant of Record

The do-it-yourself approach to global sales — piecing together a PSP like Stripe with third-party tax tools and fraud plugins — often leads to a bloated total cost of ownership.

This is why high-growth SaaS companies partner with a merchant of record (MoR) like FastSpring.

When you sell through FastSpring, we become the legal seller of the product. This shift offers three critical advantages:

1. Immediate Tax Compliance: We handle the calculation, collection, and remittance of taxes in more than 240 countries worldwide, including all U.S. tax jurisdictions. You don’t need to register your business in Berlin or Texas; we are already there.
2. Higher Approval Rates: Because FastSpring processes payments locally in major regions, we see significantly higher authorization rates than standard PSPs. We also manage dunning behind the scenes to recover revenue that would otherwise be lost to churn.
3. One Wire, One Report: You can sell in 20+ currencies to maximize conversion, but FastSpring converts and remits a single, clean transfer to your bank account. We absorb the complexity so you can focus on your product and your business’ growth.

Go Global Without the Headaches: Partner With FastSpring

You’ve built a world-class product in LATAM. Don’t let the complexity of global bureaucracy slow you down.

By partnering with FastSpring, you gain a liability shield against tax risk and fraud, while delivering a seamless, localized experience to buyers anywhere in the world.

Ready to scale your SaaS beyond borders? Schedule a demo today and let us handle the complexity.

The post 4 Mistakes LATAM SaaS Companies Make When Selling Abroad — and How to Overcome Them appeared first on FastSpring.

As the UK’s biggest B2B games industry event, PGC London is a flagship conference for the global games ecosystem. Returning to The Brewery, this year’s summit brings together over 3,000 delegates and 1,200 companies — from indie developers to AAA publishers, investors, and tool providers — to cover every key format from mobile, PC, and console to AI, XR, and Web3.

This conference is known for its quick-fire format and robust meeting systems, making it a perfect place to connect with the global gaming community.

New for 2026: The Apps Business Summit

This year, PGC London is expanding its reach beyond pure gaming with the launch of the Apps Business Summit. Taking place at the Barbican Centre on Jan. 19, this brand-new one-day event is dedicated to the global app economy. It brings together leaders in mobile app development to share knowledge on user acquisition, monetization, and retention tactics drawn from both the games and non-games sectors.

Access to the Apps Business Summit is included as part of your PGC London ticket, giving you even more opportunities to build business-boosting connections.

Where to Get Tickets

Still need to register? Head over to the registration page to grab your ticket. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with the entire gaming ecosystem at the industry’s leading international conference series.

How to Connect With FastSpring

Come see us in Booth P1, or to schedule a personalized meeting at the show, request a demo now to have someone reach out to you. We look forward to seeing you in London to discuss how we can help you take control of your game’s growth.

FastSpring is how gaming publishers sell in more places around the world. For nearly two decades, FastSpring has been a trusted payment provider you can use to sell games or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your game with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great games! To learn more about how FastSpring supports game developers, visit fastspring.gg.

The post FastSpring Goes Platinum for PocketGamer Connects London appeared first on FastSpring.

What Is the Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA) and When Does It Go Into Effect?

The Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA) goes into effect on December 18, 2025 and will, among other things, require companies such as Apple and Google to allow third-party payment systems and third-party app stores within their mobile ecosystems.

Is Japan’s MSCA Similar to What Other Countries and Unions Are Doing?

Many countries around the world are enacting similar regulations and laws around mobile steering for payments — also referred to as D2C (direct to consumer) or app2web — including the EU, Brazil, and the U.S. (there are separate ongoing legal cases involving Google and Apple).

However, the MSCA in Japan is unique for a couple of reasons:

• It will affect both Android and iOS, not distinguishing between the platforms.
• It addresses native payments, or payments directly inside the game processed by a third party such as FastSpring.

Since this is the first ruling impactfully addressing native payments, this is an area we’ll be monitoring closely.

What Platforms Will Be Affected by the MSCA?

This act will affect any platforms that the act qualifies as “designated providers,” which we can safely assume includes the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

What Other Changes Does the MSCA Include?

Steering is only one of many changes that will be enforced when the MSCA takes effect in Japan in December. To read more about how the act unlocks alternative app stores, requires greater transparency in the platforms’ app review process, and ultimately represents a targeted effort to enable fair and open digital markets, you can find the “tentative translation” English version of the guidelines as published by the JFTC here. 

Related Reading

• Japan Releases ‘Mobile Software Competition Act Guidelines’ Targeting Apple and Google (August 2025)
• Japan Enacts Regulatory Law Targeting Apple and Google Smartphone Marketplace Dominance (June 2024)

About FastSpring

FastSpring is how gaming studios and mobile app makers sell in more places around the world. For nearly two decades, FastSpring has been a payment provider you can use to sell apps, games, or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great apps!

The post News: Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act Opens Up Steering This Month appeared first on FastSpring.

This shift unlocks entirely new ways to convert users, increase revenue, and build direct customer relationships.

In our recent webinar with Business of Apps, FastSpring experts break down the current rules, the business opportunity behind app2web (“steering”), and what it takes to launch a successful strategy quickly.

Below, you’ll find the full replay plus a few of our top takeaways.

Why App2Web Is a Big Deal for App Brands

App2web isn’t just about reducing platform fees (though that’s a major benefit). When FastSpring surveyed gaming companies — 100% of which develop games for iOS, and 96% of which develop for Android — the #1 reason for adopting direct-to-consumer web stores was actually improved access to customer data (for example, email addresses).

That first-party data is so important because it opens the door to:

• Better retargeting and audience segmentation.
• Increased conversion efficiency in paid media.
• More control over retention, churn reduction, and win-back.
• Direct communication outside the app marketplaces.

How to Launch App-to-Web Monetization in Weeks, Not Months

When you’re launching app2web monetization flows, there are some essential steps you’ll want to follow in order to handle entitlement flows, secure token handling, and data pass-through for a smooth checkout experience.

Some specific points to consider are:

• Adding a “Buy Direct” call-to-action in your app.
• Passing user and product identifiers into your web checkout.
• Offering fast, familiar payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• Using entitlements via webhooks or API to return users seamlessly to the app.

And if this process feels complicated, FastSpring’s SteerSafe™ solution simplifies this flow, making it easier to roll out app-to-web monetization quickly.

Outside the US? Web2App Is Your Next Growth Lever

Because steering rules differ by region, non-U.S. users often need to follow a two-step path in order to get access to these benefits:

1. Drive them to a value-add non-payment experience (e.g., loyalty perks, community features, downloadable content) where you can convert users.
2. Re-engage them with marketing to complete a web store checkout.

This approach still drives first-party data capture, unlocks access to new monetization levers, and prepares your business for future regulatory changes already underway in markets like Japan and the EU.

About FastSpring

FastSpring is how mobile app developers sell in more places around the world. For over two decades, FastSpring has been a trusted payment provider you can use to sell apps or in-app purchases on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your app with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great games! To learn more about how FastSpring supports mobile app developers, visit fastspring.com/apps.

The post Webinar Recap: Launch App-to-Web Monetization ASAP appeared first on FastSpring.