Apple Gets into Spat with Crypto Wallet Players Zeus, Damus Over Listing on App Store: Details

Evan Kaloudis, the founder of Zeus digital wallet app took to Twitter to share his woes with Apple earlier this week.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 15 June 2023 13:57 IST

Apple Gets into Spat with Crypto Wallet Players Zeus, Damus Over Listing on App Store: Details

Photo Credit: Reuters

Apple’s App Store policies have previously been called “unfriendly” by crypto giants like Coinbase

Highlights

Crypto apps are scanned thoroughly before being published on App Store
Apple aims to safeguard its users against financial risks
Zeus, Damus are looking to resolve their grievances with Apple

Apple, despite having faced brutal criticism for maintaining stringent anti-crypto policies, has found itself in a spat with Web3 players again. Two Bitcoin wallet providers — Zeus and Damus have called out the iPhone-maker for restricting their operations on Apple's App Store. While Apple has given reasons behind its step, the wallet players argue that because of Apple's undecided stance on crypto, they are losing spot on the App Store, that has clocked over 650 million average weekly users from around the world.

Evan Kaloudis, the founder of Zeus digital wallet app took to Twitter to share his woes with Apple earlier this week. Kaloudis shared a screenshot that showed Apple's ‘Guideline 3.1.5', that addresses matters around business, payments, and cryptocurrencies.

“Your app facilitates the transmission of a virtual currency, but was not submitted by a corresponding exchange or recognised financial institution,” Apple said in its notification to Zeus.

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As a way to resolve the issue, the tech giant has asked Zeus to provide documents attesting that Zeus has all the required licences and permissions to release this crypto app in all the locations Zeus operates in.

Zeus v0.7.6 has been rejected by Apple pic.twitter.com/9dNSjBrVBd
— EVAN KALOUDIS (@evankaloudis) June 14, 2023

As of ten hours ago, Kaloudis had not received any update from Apple after he claimed to have “added some notes for them and resubmitted”.

Not quite. We've added some notes for them and resubmitted.
— EVAN KALOUDIS (@evankaloudis) June 14, 2023

This is the second time this week that a crypto wallet app has come into a problematic zone with Apple.

Damus, another crypto wallet app much like Zeus, allows its users to wire small amounts of Bitcoin to their favourite content creators as gifts.

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In both these cases, Apple has said that these apps violate its App Store policies.

Zeus and Damus, both, are non-custodial wallets. This means, these wallet apps allow users to hold their own private keys giving them complete autonomy and responsibilities of their crypto assets.

Apple, on the other hand, requires apps related to the crypto transactions to be registered on centralised exchanges, most of which provide custodial wallet services, keeping users' private keys in their own storage.

Zeus' previous version of the wallet app is available on the App Store, but its version 0.7.6 is facing issues. Changes made to this update to Zeus' new version remain unclear.

In order to grab a spot on the App Store, Damus has eliminated its “Zap” feature, via which people could gift BTC to their favourite content creators, a report from CoinDesk said on Thursday, June 15.

Meanwhile, Apple's App Store policies have again received opposition from the crypto players.

Breez, another non-custodial crypto wallet, tweeted its opinion on the subject.

Non-custodial wallets should be approved, there's a specific exception in the same section. There are a lot of wallets in the app store.
— Breez :zap: (@Breez_Tech) June 14, 2023

As of now, Apple has not provided any clarification on the topic.

Last year, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong had also expressed disappointment on the existing rules of Apple's App Store, which he said hindered the ease of integrating new payment options other than Apple Pay for pro-Web3 developers.

This year in April, a California appeals court called Apple's policy of not allowing app developers to integrate third party payment methods with their services as ‘unlawful'. The court ruling is expected to bring changes to Apple's App Store payment practices and could also allow Web3 apps to add more operability to their iOS iterations.

Apple unveiled its first mixed reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro, at its annual developer conference, along with new Mac models and upcoming software updates. We discuss all the most important announcements made by the company at WWDC 2023 on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Apple, Crypto Wallet, Zeus, Damus

Radhika Parashar

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Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More