I've spent a lot of this year talking to app founders about App2Web, and the conversation has moved remarkably quickly from "is this actually going to happen?" to "how do we make it work?"

Actually, in the US we're already well into that second conversation. Since the Epic vs. Apple ruling, apps can link users to web checkouts without Apple taking a commission. Consumers are getting used to this journey, and when  designed well, the economics can be very compelling. 

But in Europe it has been harder. Apple's response to the Digital Markets Act created more choice, but also enough complexity that plenty of developers struggled to work out whether the opportunity was worth pursuing.

So what’s changed?

On 1 October, when Apple's simpler commercial model for alternative payments in the EU came into effect. Developers can now:

• stay with Apple's in-app purchase (IAP) at 26%, 
• use an alternative checkout inside the app at 20%,
• or send customers to web checkout at 15%, with lower rates in some cases, such as subscriptions after their first year.

Yes, that's a meaningful shift, but Europe still isn't the US. An 11-point gap between IAP and web checkout is a very different calculation from paying Apple nothing on a web purchase.

The number that matters: net proceeds

I'll admit I've become slightly obsessed with net proceeds since working with more app founders on App2Web.

A lower Apple commission on web payments doesn't necessarily mean the difference drops straight to your bottom line. Some customers won't make the jump from App2Web. Others will arrive and not convert. And once you own the transaction, you also own the payment costs and all the operational plumbing behind it.

Match Group is a good illustration from the US. They expect alternative payments to save around $130 million this year, but their CFO has also been clear that once you factor in what you pay the card companies, some fee structures don't add up. If that holds in the US, it holds even more in Europe, where Apple still takes a cut of the web purchase.

So the question I'd encourage founders to ask is "How much revenue do you actually keep from each customer over their lifetime?”

Teams already selling on the web are finding that the answer goes well beyond the headline fee. Runna found that subscribers acquired on the web retained 15% better - and that compounds across the lifetime of every customer.

This is not about swapping one payment button for another. It's working out which mix of app and web gives you the best economics.

App2Web is getting easier to do well

Not long ago, going direct meant building a whole bunch of it yourself. Moving someone from app to web without wrecking conversion. Connecting a web purchase back to the right user.

Managing subscriptions across different environments. Meeting Apple's requirements. Then building the commerce infrastructure to sell globally.

A lot of that is getting easier. 

The infrastructure around App2Web has matured significantly. Developers spend less time stitching systems together and more time on what actually improves conversion, retention and revenue. 

But it isn't effortless. In Europe, Apple's reporting and implementation requirements still add real complexity. And payments, currencies, tax, fraud, chargebacks, and customer support don't disappear just because Apple is no longer processing the transaction.But the ecosystem is increasingly able to manage it, and testing payment flows is becoming more accessible.

This is where Merchant of Record becomes particularly relevant. At Paddle, we take responsibility for that underlying commerce complexity: payments, tax, fraud, chargebacks and selling across currencies. Apple's own reporting and implementation requirements still need to be met, but an app business doesn't have to build a global payments and compliance operation alongside them.

The bigger opportunity isn't payments

This is the bit I find most interesting.

App teams have become increasingly sophisticated at acquisition, engagement and retention. But monetisation has largely happened on fixed rails. The App Store decided how you charged, what the checkout looked like and, to a large extent, what kind of commercial relationship you could have with your customer.

Once part of that journey moves to the web, a lot of those constraints fall away. 

App2Web was never just about redirecting existing app users to a different checkout. It opens up web-first acquisition, where what you spend on marketing connects much more directly to what customers pay. It lets you experiment with pricing and packaging, subscription lengths, bundles and localised offers. And it gives you more ways to improve retention and lifetime value (LTV), from better cancellation and win-back journeys to the payment methods your customers actually prefer.

Take Photomyne, who were sourcing and onboarding online traffic from the web before they ever started taking payments there. They saw an opportunity, and now they operate across 136 different territories.

None of this means IAP is going away. Apple's checkout is familiar, frictionless and trusted, and for some customers it will remain the best-converting option. We are not swapping from one rigid rule ("everyone pays through Apple") to another ("everyone should pay on the web").

But app founders are now making that call themselves.

What I'd do with that choice

The smartest teams I speak to aren't picking a side. They're testing different journeys, understanding the economics at a customer and market level, and building a monetisation model around lifetime value rather than the fee on a single transaction. In my experience, the habit of testing matters more than any single result.

That's why Apple's latest European changes matter. Not because every app developer suddenly pays Apple less, but because another major barrier to experimentation has come down.

App2Web isn’t just a payments shift. I'm increasingly convinced it's something bigger: a shift in who gets to control monetisation. And we're only just starting to see what app founders will do with that control.