MSC4286: App store compliant handling of payment links within events

[hughns]

Rendered

Implementations:

• Ruma: html: support for unstable MSC4286 ruma/ruma#2067
• Element X iOS: Support for experimental MSC4286 to not render external payment details element-hq/element-x-ios#4099
• Element iOS: Support for experimental MSC4286 to not render external payment details element-hq/element-ios#7927

[manuroe]

Note that massive changes are happening on the App Store topic. Since last week for USA, and only for the USA at this moment:

As part of the ruling, the judge says that Apple cannot:
- Impose “any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app”
- Restrict developers’ style, formatting, or placement of links for purchases outside of an app
- Block or limit the “use of buttons or other calls to action”
- Interfere with consumers’ choice to leave an app with anything beyond “a neutral message apprising users that they are going to a third-party site”
https://www.theverge.com/news/659246/apple-epic-app-store-judge-ruling-control

Hopefully it will extend worldwide soon and we will not need this MSC.

[MTRNord]

I am unsure if we should “approve” questionable legality practices of apple in Matrix Spec. Especially considering the recently lost court cases, I believe this is the wrong move and instead, at most should be handled on an implementation basis rather than spec.

See for example, https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/30/epic-games-just-scored-a-major-win-against-apple/ as a randomly chosen source for this.

[ara4n]

Matrix is built for the real world, and the sad reality is that today in most jurisdictions Apple still has this rule in place and has had it for many years - even if there's an injunction against it at the time of writing in the US. The fact that it's legally questionable is orthogonal to the fact that exists and impacts every Matrix client on the iOS App Store, and therefore needs to be solved in a consistent cross-client manner - hence being in the spec.

[hughns]

I am unsure if we should “approve” questionable legality practices of apple in Matrix Spec. Especially considering the recently lost court cases, I believe this is the wrong move and instead, at most should be handled on an implementation basis rather than spec.

The problem I see with treating it as an implementation issue, is that being complaint requires cooperation between the homeserver and the client.

Where it is a "closed" homeserver that has a restricted client (i.e. the server and client are under the control of the same entity), treating it as implementation is fine.

However, if a homeserver wants to operate on a more "open" basis and allow the users to pick their client, I believe it would be beneficial to have this in the specification.

[KitsuneRal]

I don't see it as any sort of "approval" but I feel like we are speccing a loophole. If a given homeserver doesn't comply with this MSC, clients will have a hard time complying with Apple's practices anyway. And on the other hand, since the content is still making its way to the client even with the span markup, will it be sufficient for Apple? The last thing I would want is Apple coming back to the Foundation for endorsing a practice they see as violating their T&Cs. The link is not even related to the client, it's made by the server which, usually in Matrix, is formally independent from the client; therefore I'm not sure the quoted part from the review guidelines actually applies. Can/Do we have a legal review of this?

[MTRNord]

I feel like this is a major downgrade in UX and arguably makes the app unusable. Imho I rather would see the APIs standardized to be native to the app rather than this.

[ara4n]

i suspect you are missing the point of the MSC, which is that some appstores don't let you manage purchases with native code in the app or with links to external web services.

[ara4n]

Hopefully it will extend worldwide soon and we will not need this MSC.

unfortunately we can't count on this, plus it might revert in future. so far Apple have only changed things in the US, and based on other regulatory behaviour they may apply regulation strictly to the geographies where they've been regulated.

[hughns]

A full client implementation has landed in Element iOS so marking as ready for review.