Court denies Apple’s request to pause ruling on App Store payment fees

A U.S. court denied Apple a stay on a ruling that requires the company to stop charging developers for payments made outside the App Store through links in apps.

This means in the U.S., Apple will no longer be able to charge developers a fee when customers click on a link within their app that takes them outside the App Store for payment, resulting in a potential loss of revenue to the company.

“Apple ‘bears the burden of showing that the circumstances justify an exercise of [our] discretion,’” the court said in a filing. “After reviewing the relevant factors, we are not persuaded that a stay is appropriate,” it added.

Epic Games’ head Tim Sweeney applauded the court’s ruling and said, “The long national nightmare of Apple tax is ended,” in a post on X.

In April, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in favor of Epic Games, saying that Apple was in “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction that barred the company from forcing anticompetitive pricing. This essentially means that Apple must change the App Store rules and allow developers to freely link to their website for purchasing digital goods.

Large companies are already making changes to their apps, with Spotify and Amazon publishing new updates that let users pay for their subscriptions and purchases outside the App Store.

With the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) slotted for next week, this is a big blow to Apple. Earlier this week, the company published a report saying that it generated $1.3 trillion in billings and sales in 2024. It added 90% of those sales didn’t generate commission revenue for Apple.