Purchase physical product from iPhone app without Apple in app purchase

Question

Can an iPhone app allow a user to purchase a physical product (say a pen or a mouse) from inside an app, without using Apple in app purchase?

Is it allowed by Apple?

If yes, do you know any API that supports this?

Thanks AJ

Answer 1

Yes, but you can't use Apple payments to do it. All of the apps use their own payment processor to do it (Paypal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, etc).

They each have API's -- there is some code for PayPal in this question

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/779423/has-anyone-implemented-the-paypal-api-through-a-native-iphone-app

You cannot use these mechanisms to deliver a digital good to the app (features or content), but you can use it for physical goods (as you wanted to).

Answer 2

You are not permitted to sell physical goods or services using 'In-App Purchasing' since the goods purchased via this method must relate directly to the app using them.

You are free to implement your own payment handling system for selling physical goods though - for instace the PayPal API

If you already have a website for this purpose you could even forward them to that to take the payment - though this may reduce the quality of the user experience greatly.