The Telegram CEO accuses Apple of destroying dreams and crushing entrepreneurs

Telegram’s CEO has accused Apple of shattering dreams and ruining entrepreneurship with its app store rules, more specifically the company’s 30 percent commission charged on in-app purchases for developers made over April 1, 2019 Earn a million dollars a year.

Pavel Durov wrote on his Telegram channel that Apple informed the messaging platform that it would not allow content creators to use third-party payment methods for sales. Telegram allows content creators to offer access to channels or individual posts via a paywall that users can pay for using a third-party payment method rather than Apple’s in-app purchase system.

Durov said Apple is “not content with content creators monetizing their efforts without paying a 30 percent tax,” and that Telegram had no choice but to disable paid posts and channels on its iOS app. “This is just another example of a trillion-dollar monopoly abusing its market dominance at the expense of millions of users trying to monetize their own content,” Durov continued.

Durov accused Apple of destroying dreams and crushing entrepreneurs with its “App Store” tax, which charges Apple a 15% or 30% commission on most in-app purchases. Durov called on regulators in the EU, India and around the world to “act”. Durov’s full message is below.

Some content creators have started using third-party payment bots to sell access to individual posts on their Telegram channels. This allowed content creators to get almost 100% of what their subscribers were paying for, which was great.

Unfortunately, we got word from Apple that they don’t want content creators to monetize their efforts without paying a 30% tax to Apple. Since Apple has complete control over its ecosystem, we had no choice but to disable such paid posts on iOS devices.

This is just another example of a trillion dollar monopoly abusing its market dominance at the expense of millions of users trying to monetize their own content. I hope regulators in the EU, India and elsewhere take action before Apple crushes more dreams and crushes more entrepreneurs with a tax bigger than any government VAT.

In the meantime, we at Telegram will work to offer developers powerful and easy-to-use tools to monetize their content – outside of Apple’s restrictive ecosystem.

This isn’t the first time Durov has spoken out against Apple. In August, the CEO lashed out at Apple’s “obscure” app store rules.