SAN FRANCISCO - April 16, 2026 - Allocents, a San Francisco-based mobile payments company, has launched a direct billing SDK for mobile apps that enables iOS and Android developers to bypass Apple's 30% App Store commission while maintaining checkout conversion rates — a challenge that has stymied the industry since the Epic v. Apple ruling opened US in-app purchases to alternative payment systems in April 2025.
The company says its embedded payment sheet architecture addresses the core flaw in existing direct billing approaches: the browser redirect. A May 2025 study by RevenueCat — the largest public experiment comparing in-app purchase (IAP) and web checkout flows, conducted across 12,500 users — found that routing users to an external browser reduced initial conversion by 33% and yielded only 93 cents for every dollar of IAP revenue. Allocents keeps the entire checkout inside the app using a native payment sheet with Apple Pay and card entry, eliminating the redirect entirely.
A New Architecture for Direct Billing
Apple's in-app purchase flow converts at 71% from CTA tap to completed purchase, according to the RevenueCat study. External web checkout converts at just 44%. That 27-percentage-point gap translates directly into lost subscribers and revenue.
Allocents' SDK presents a native-feeling bottom sheet within the app. Users see Apple Pay, enter card details, and complete the purchase without leaving the app or opening a browser — matching the trust and convenience of StoreKit while routing the transaction through Allocents at 5% + 50¢ instead of 30%.
"The data is clear: sending users to an external browser destroys conversion. But that's an architecture problem, not a direct billing problem," said Marcus Chen, Founder and CEO of Allocents. "Our embedded payment sheet keeps the entire checkout inside the app — Apple Pay, card entry, everything — so developers get the margin improvement without the conversion hit."
Full Merchant of Record in 15 Minutes
Allocents acts as the full Merchant of Record — handling payment processing, tax in 190+ countries, chargebacks, fraud protection, refunds, and customer support. Key capabilities include:
- 15-Minute SDK Integration — Single SDK supporting Swift/SwiftUI, Kotlin, Flutter, and React Native (coming soon). Zero to first test purchase in under 10 minutes.
- Sign Up & Save Paywalls — New users choose between standard App Store purchase or a discounted direct billing option.
- Switch & Save Campaigns — Intelligently timed offers to migrate existing StoreKit subscribers, with A/B testing and gradual rollout starting at 10% of users.
- Smart Cancellation Flows — Discount offers, pause options, and retention questionnaires unavailable through Apple's StoreKit cancellation.
- Gradual Migration Controls — Start small, measure, scale up, roll back instantly from a dashboard — no app update required.
A Bring Your Own Stripe (BYOS) mode is also available at 0.5% for teams with existing Stripe infrastructure.
The Financial Case
The savings are substantial at scale. A mobile app with $3M ARR can reclaim approximately $308,000 per year — a 10.3 percentage point net margin improvement — by switching from Apple's 30% to Allocents' 5% + 50¢, assuming 75% web adoption with no user-facing discount. At $10M ARR, the figure exceeds $1 million annually. Allocents publishes a detailed breakdown of how developers can reduce Apple App Store fees at every revenue tier.
"Every mobile app developer with $500K or more in revenue is sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary platform fees," said Chen. "The legal door is open. The technology exists. The only question left is whether your checkout experience is good enough to make the math work."
Why Now: Apple Heads to the Supreme Court
Allocents launches at a pivotal moment. On April 6, 2026, Apple filed to take its App Store fee dispute with Epic Games to the Supreme Court, challenging a December 2025 ruling that found Apple in contempt for charging a 27% fee on external payments. Google, facing a parallel case, settled in March 2026 and dropped Play Store commissions to 20%.
The legal uncertainty has made compliance critical. Epic's spokesperson noted that "only a few brave developers, including Spotify, Kindle, and Patreon" have adopted external payments so far. Allocents' MoR model means the company — not the developer — bears the regulatory burden as the legal seller of record. The company details its approach to compliant external payment for iOS apps on its website.
Market Context
Apple's App Store generated $117.6 billion in consumer spending in 2025 (+13.6% YoY). US developers generated $33.68 billion in gross revenue through Apple's payment system in 2024, with Apple earning over $10 billion in commissions. The global in-app purchase market reached $190.2 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $593.1 billion by 2034.
Existing direct billing approaches require developers to stitch together multiple systems — subscription management (RevenueCat/Adapty), web checkout MoR (Paddle), and payment processing (Stripe). Allocents collapses these into a single SDK.
"I spent nearly a decade building mobile payment infrastructure. I know exactly how StoreKit works and what a native payment experience needs to feel like," said Chen. "That's why integration takes 15 minutes — we designed it from the inside out."
Availability
Allocents is available now for Swift/SwiftUI, Kotlin, and Flutter, with React Native coming soon. Free to test in sandbox mode. Developers can get started at allocents.com or book a consultation to discuss migration strategy.
About Allocents
Allocents is a San Francisco-based mobile payments company that provides a drop-in direct billing SDK for iOS and Android app developers. The platform enables developers to bypass Apple's 30% App Store commission with a 15-minute integration, acting as full Merchant of Record at 5% + 50¢ per transaction — handling payments, tax remittance in 190+ countries, chargebacks, fraud protection, refunds, and customer support. Allocents also offers a Bring Your Own Stripe mode at 0.5% for teams with existing payment infrastructure. For more information, visit allocents.com.
Disclaimer: This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies (including product offerings, regulatory plans and business plans) and may change without notice. You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.
Media Contact
Company Name: Allocents
Contact Person: Marcus Chen
Email: Send Email
Phone: (415) 802-3147
City: San Francisco
State: CA
Country: United States
Website: allocents.com
