South Korea just handed Apple and Google the bill for five years of app-store control — and the order that comes with it matters more than the fine.
The country's Broadcast Media Communications Commission fined Google 42.9 billion won ($32.35 million) and Apple 20.8 billion won (about $15.7 million) for limiting users to specific app payment systems, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The combined 63.71 billion won is the first set of sanctions since South Korea amended its Telecommunications Business Act in 2021 — the law that made it the first country in the world to ban forced in-app payments.
The regulator's case is less about the headline percentages than about how hollow the alternative was. Apple and Google charged 26 percent on third-party payments, four points below their own 30 percent in-app fee — but developers using a third-party processor still had to pay payment-gateway fees and build and run their own payment systems, wiping out the difference. Google also hid the charge breakdown when users paid through a third party, and Apple made developers submit their apps separately to offer one. App reviews, meanwhile, were delayed without explanation. Apple was separately found to have charged domestic developers on the VAT-inclusive consumer price while overseas developers paid on the VAT-exclusive supply value, a gap that ran from July 2015 to January 2023.
The corrective orders are the real story. Both companies must let apps link out to external payments within three months, submit implementation plans within a month, and fix the review-delay and fee-discrimination practices. Google already has a head start: a global payments overhaul it announced in March lets developers use their own payment methods or external web payments, with a 10 percent service fee on the first $1 million of annual revenue. Apple, which said it disagreed with the decision and is evaluating its options under Korean law, has no equivalent move on the table. Google did not immediately comment.
The decision lands in a week when the app-store wars are heating up on multiple fronts: Australia ordered Apple to open the iPhone just last week, and developers are still watching whether a potential U.S. antitrust settlement actually changes anything. Korea's law was the template everyone pointed to — and for five years, it produced no enforcement. Now it has, and the next question is whether developers harmed by the old system sue for damages, which Korean law allows, or whether Apple and Google challenge the orders in court. Either way, the era in which the 2021 ban was a paper tiger is over.
— via Reuters