An app with a web signup funnel · B2C · app David tried
Ask web users to pay $1-$8.75 toward the trial's cost, then charge the saved card
Host was charged ~$70 by accident and did a chargeback
Unknownweb-to-apppaywallpayments-checkout
What they did
A web ad leads to long onboarding in Safari. The paywall says the 7-day trial costs the company about $8.75-$10 and asks the user to pay the full cost, $2 or $1 via Apple Pay (card stored in Stripe). Later in onboarding, a 'start your actual subscription now' button charges the stored card immediately without another payment sheet.
What happened
David paid $1, then was charged about $70 on a later tap and got his money back via a chargeback. Chargebacks and complaints risk being dropped by Stripe.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · App Store Ethics, Dark Patterns, and Rule-Breakers — Steve P. Young, App Masters“Do you want to pay for the full cost of this trial or do you want to pay $2 or do you want to pay $1?”
“they just immediately charged the card like $70 bucks, because they got the credit card info with the $1 free trial”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Pay for searches-then-installs on one quiet keyword until the app ranks #1#1 for both keyword spellings and stuck there; ~$5K/month mostly organic
- App Masters: Buy App Store reviews that mention your target keywordsOne or two keyword reviews moved rankings; stopped because stores punish it
- App Masters: Have friends mark your best 5-star review as helpful so it shows first
- Show the paywall's close button only after 5 secondsIncreases revenue, per the agency founder; no numbers
- Launch a simple one-feature app with a paywall that has no close buttonGrew $1K to $10K/month; 35% trial-to-paid; fell to $5K when Apple forced a close button
- Test a hard paywall against giving away one free puzzleHard paywall raised revenue; follow-up test vs more locked content, result not given
- Ask for a rating during onboarding or right after the paywall, not after 10 usesSeen to work really well across apps; no numbers
- Rootd: Show the paywall during onboarding, with a close buttonRevenue doubled
- Weather Up: Pull Google AdSense ads and move to a hard paywall with a 7-day trialAds caused bad reviews and complaints; app lost money for ~a year without them
- Launch Center Pro: Ship a big release that rides the home screen customization trend~$20K that month, then lost the lead by not iterating
- Earning under $1K a month? Try a hard paywall to see if people want the appTrial-to-paid under 10% suggests no fit; 10-20% means people find value
- Change one icon on a freemium app's main screen to get more paywall views+57% paywall views
- App Masters: Pick app ideas from overlooked keywords in categories where people pay
- MyFitnessPal: Show a closable paywall each time a returning user opens the appHost resubscribed at times; no numbers