You Can Now Buy Stepn NFTs on iOS—But You’ll Have to Pay the Apple Tax

Stepn, a mobile “move-to-earn” game that rewards players with crypto tokens for walking and running with specialized NFTs, has launched an in-app marketplace for NFT sales within its iOS app for Apple’s iPhone. Furthermore, developer Find Satoshi Lab has integrated Apple Pay for purchases using credit and debit cards.

Mobile apps typically don’t allow for NFT purchases on the secondary market because of the complexities introduced by Apple and Google charging a 30% fee on most in-app purchases. That includes NFTs, which means app developers would either need to charge users that extra fee to transact on mobile, or otherwise eat the fee as part of the cost of doing business.

Stepn has done the former here, but in a way that abstracts away the crypto elements and bundles in the extra fees in the process. In this case, Stepn has made it possible for users to purchase NFT sneakers—which enable users to earn token rewards—through the app via a new in-app currency called Sparks, which is not a cryptocurrency.