News · Apps
RevenueCat BlogJuly 20, 2026

A license to bill: Selling a Mac app without a merchant of record

RevenueCat's blog outlines how Arborist sells its Mac app outside the Mac App Store using RevenueCat and Stripe Managed Payments. The approach allows the developer to handle billing independently rather than relying on Apple's default payment processing.

HTSApp's take

Selling outside the App Store means you inherit the merchant-of-record headaches Apple normally absorbs, and this points to RevenueCat plus Stripe Managed Payments as a way to offload sales tax and VAT handling. If you're weighing direct distribution to dodge the platform cut, the real question is whether the compliance and refund overhead nets out cheaper at your volume. Worth checking whether the same pattern extends cleanly to iOS given the external-purchase rules are messier there than on macOS.

Read the full article at RevenueCat Blog →

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