Subscribe via API?

Hi, I’d like to make it possible for patrons to subscribe inside of my iOS app. Is that possible?

Hi Jon,

Good question! Our API as it stands doesn’t create or modify payments. To pledge and subscribe patrons will have to link out to your pledge flow and process it through the patreon site.

To make things smoother, you can link them directly to the first step of the flow (reward tiers) rather than your main creator page, if you’d like.

I know this isn’t ideally what you were asking about - hope it’s somewhat valuable nonetheless.

Tal

Thanks Tal! While not ideal, this is valuable.

Do you know if others have been successful getting iOS apps into the app store with this method? I know Apple has pretty specific rules about not linking out to webpages to subscribe to a service since Apple would want to manage that themselves so they can get their 30% cut.

Any info you have on that would be super valuable!
Jon

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Ah, that’s an important question. Unfortunately, I’m not an expert in that ecosystem.

Thanks @tal. Is there someone else at Patreon who might have the answer?

Hey @jgordner!

Unfortunately we don’t currently support an oauth type that can be used in mobile. Our current oauth type requires using sending us your client secret and on mobile it’s not secure to store that. This is on our TODO list but we don’t really have a timetable for you unfortunately.

One option that may work for you is to have web app embedded in a webview that does the normal oauth flow. I know it defeats the purpose of the native app a bit but it’s much more secure.

If you store your client secret on your own server and have your own API and authorization system that talks to your app, you can do the auth flow that way as well. The user will temporarily need to use the browser to authorize your app, but then you can switch back to your native app, pass the appropriate data, and proceed from there.

I use a similar system with Patronizer. While not mobile, the apps are embedded in the Adobe applications, which is the same idea.

Whether or not there’s an issue with Apple allowing an app that takes payments processed through Patreon… I’d say that depends a lot more on the nature of your app.

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