(1 year, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Kelli Fairbrother: It is absolutely critical that judicial review is the standard that is used, because I think we have seen time and time again, in markets all around the world, that when Governments act, Apple and Google do their best to try to get around the work that is being done. They lawyer up—they have millions to spend on appeals slowing things down—and there really is a sense of urgency. This is existential for a lot of small app developers, so we would really urge that the Bill passes, it is not watered down and it passes without delay and without dilution, I think we would say.
Christian Owens: I agree.
Q
I was interested in what you said about the cost of transactions. You suggested 3%. Where does that figure come from?
Kelli Fairbrother: Because of the constraints that Apple and Google put on us, we built a website, and on our website we use Stripe integration. The Stripe fees come out at about 3% to 4%, and it pays us every seven days. Again, this is where you can see competition; in the online payments ecosystem, there is healthy competition. Then you compare that with the app store monopolies and the control that it exerts over payments. The terms and conditions say that I am not allowed to use a prohibited payment method—for example, Christian is a prohibited payment method. That is not a free and fair ecosystem.
Q
Christian Owens: We take the action that Apple and Google are taking, in terms of processing a transaction. We do this for thousands of companies outside the realms of the app store. The average price that a business will pay us will be somewhere in the region of 5%, and we are able to provide all the same services. We do payment processing. We are able to pay local sales taxes. We are able to deal with fraud. We review, with a human, every product that we sell before we sell it to ensure consumer safety. We are able to do all that in a profitable way by charging 5% on transactions.
Q
Kelli Fairbrother: For our site, because of the 15%, we tend to break even on most of our transactions—on a transactional basis. So for us, there actually is not a great deal of room, because we also pay the content providers. The challenge that we have at the moment is that we are trying to raise investment and look as investible as possible. The reason why we built the website is that we were given a really difficult decision: should we force people into a web-based experience, to try to regain the margin that we have lost, or should we raise our prices? For us, it may not be that you will see this immediately delivered back to the customer. For us, the position is that we are going to continue to deliver an exceptional experience to the customer and we are going to be able to afford to do that. That is the crux of it for us.
Q
Christian Owens: In its current form—as it is now—this is a very good Bill, and I really encourage it to go through without being watered down any further. It is great as it stands; it is a great start. I think that it is going to allow small businesses in this country to be more competitive and not be giving away a third of their revenue, effectively, to Apple and Google.
Kelli Fairbrother: I agree.
Q
Kelli Fairbrother: It is regular in the sense that the company takes a month of data and then pays me a month and some days later. So it happens every month, but it is happening every month on a timeline that is, again, at least five times as long as what I would be getting—using Stripe as an example.