iOS In App Purchase - Store Credits

Question

I am implementing in-app purchases in an app that allows you to download and read articles. Rather than having a product identifier for every single article, I would rather sell "credits", i.e, a credit to pick any 5 articles, or any 10, etc.

Apple's guidelines state:

11.4 Apps that use IAP to purchase credits or other currencies must consume those credits within the application

11.5 Apps that use IAP to purchase credits or other currencies that expire will be rejected

I am not sure how to interpret 11.4. My application will indeed consume the credits to make purchases, but in reality they will be tracked by a server. Does anyone know if this type of system is allowed?

Answer 1

Yes, what you want to do is allowed. What 11.4 means is that you can't do the following:

1) Sell 100 credits for $0.99.

2) Save the information that the user has those 100 credits to your server, and then

3) Let the user use those credits on your website, or some other application other than your iOS app, to purchase things.

Does that make sense? :)

Answer 2

I don't think it matters how you track them. My interpretation is that those credits should not be exchangeable to any goods that are not consumed within the app. So, for instance, a user cannot buy credits and then get carrots for them in a grocery.

I'd think that it's a preferred method to track the credits by a server as it's more secure. If you take examples such as 'farmvillish' online games like MyTown (no affiliation) you can be sure that they track your bought credits, 'bucks' or whatever, centrally on a server. Given this example I think you're pretty safe, but I'm not Apple.