Born the Day Apple Lost in Court
In May 2025, a federal ruling in the Epic v. Apple lawsuit did something legal observers had been watching for years: it required Apple to allow iOS developers to offer direct billing to their users. Overnight, an estimated $150 billion in annual in-app purchase volume became eligible to leave Apple's payment rails.
Most developers had no idea what to do with that. Building a compliant, conversion-optimized billing flow from scratch - handling tax remittance across 190+ countries, subscription management, chargeback liability, fraud protection, and graceful cancellation flows - is not a weekend project. It is, in fact, the kind of thing that used to require a team of engineers and a legal department.
Gabe Roeloffs and Ryan Elliott had spent years building the very systems at Apple that this ruling was now opening up. They left, and started building the shortest path between "developer who wants to stop paying 30%" and "developer who is no longer paying 30%."
That path turned out to be 15 minutes and a few lines of Swift, Kotlin, or TypeScript.
Three Steps to Zero App Store Fees
The core idea is straightforward: instead of routing purchases through StoreKit or Google Play Billing, ZeroSettle presents a native-feeling web checkout powered by Stripe - with Apple Pay support, so users barely notice the difference. Developers configure the SDK once, fetch their product catalog, and then present the ZeroSettle payment sheet wherever they currently show a paywall.
The SDK handles everything downstream: subscription renewals, entitlement tracking, upgrade and downgrade flows, cancellation questionnaires with retention offers, and real-time webhooks to keep your backend in sync. Payouts hit a developer's Stripe account on a rolling basis - not Apple's 45+ day settlement schedule.
Per transaction. No flexibility. Take it or leave it.
Full merchant of record. Taxes, compliance, liability - covered.
"We built ZeroSettle from the ground up to avoid conversion concerns - by focusing on switching existing subscribers rather than new sign-ups."- Gabe Roeloffs & Ryan Elliott, Co-Founders
A Full Billing Stack, Drop-In
ZeroSettle is not just a payment form. It is a complete replacement for the App Store billing layer - including all the annoying parts developers usually skip and then regret.
ZeroSettleKit
The official iOS SDK. Open-sourced under MIT. Replaces StoreKit with a three-call integration: configure, fetch catalog, present sheet.
Managed Billing
ZeroSettle handles sales tax, VAT, GST, chargebacks, refunds, fraud protection, and regulatory compliance in 190+ countries. Charged at 5% + $0.50.
Bring Your Own Stripe
Connect an existing Stripe account and pay 0.5% only when ZeroSettle's conversion flows successfully switch a subscriber. You stay merchant of record.
Switch & Save Flows
Sign Up & Save paywalls, Switch & Save campaigns, Upgrade & Save prompts, and Save the Sale cancellation flows with intelligent discount triggers.
Customer Portal
A full subscriber management portal: upgrade, downgrade, pause, and cancel flows - all self-serve. Real-time entitlement sync across platforms.
EscrowKit
A separate SDK for escrow and crypto payment sources - suggesting ZeroSettle's ambitions extend beyond app store billing into broader payment infrastructure.
Two Engineers Who Built The System
There is something notable about the founding pair of ZeroSettle: before building software to route payments around Apple's infrastructure, they spent years building Apple's infrastructure. Both Gabe Roeloffs and Ryan Elliott were software engineers at Apple in Cupertino - working on operating systems and systems software respectively.
That background matters. Knowing exactly how StoreKit works, where the friction points are for developers, and what compliance requirements actually look like at scale is the kind of institutional knowledge that usually takes years to accumulate. ZeroSettle was built by people who already had it.
Former Apple operating systems engineer. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo graduate (2021, President's List). Based in San Francisco. Now building the alternative to the billing system he once helped maintain.
Ex-Apple OS EngineerFormer Apple systems software engineer. Deep expertise in the low-level infrastructure that powers iOS device software. Co-architect of ZeroSettle's SDK and payment engine.
Ex-Apple Systems EngineerThe founders did not merely observe the Epic v. Apple ruling from the sidelines. They built the company to be ready for exactly this moment.
A $150 Billion Permission Slip
For a decade, Apple's 30% commission on in-app purchases was effectively a structural tax on mobile software. Developers could grumble - Epic Games did so loudly enough to end up in federal court - but there was no practical alternative.
The Epic v. Apple ruling in May 2025 changed the legal landscape, but legal permission is not the same as technical capability. Building a compliant direct billing system requires: geolocation-aware checkout flows (to comply with US-only eligibility rules), tax remittance infrastructure across dozens of jurisdictions, Stripe Connect setup for payouts, chargeback handling policies, fraud detection, and conversion-optimized UI flows that do not feel like a jarring drop out of a native app.
ZeroSettle's argument to developers is simple: you now legally can pay less than 30%, but you cannot realistically build all of that infrastructure yourself. So don't. The SDK is MIT-licensed, the integration takes 15 minutes, and the fee is 5% + $0.50. Or, if you're already running Stripe and willing to manage merchant-of-record obligations yourself, 0.5%.
For a subscription app generating $1 million in annual recurring revenue through the App Store, switching to ZeroSettle at 5% saves roughly $250,000 per year. At $10 million ARR, that becomes $2.5 million. The math is not subtle.
Fast-Moving History
Epic v. Apple ruling requires Apple to allow third-party direct billing on iOS. ZeroSettle is conceived by two former Apple engineers who see the opening immediately.
ZeroSettle accepted into Y Combinator Winter 2026 batch. Product launches on Product Hunt as "Drop-in direct billing SDK to skip the 30% Apple Tax" - reaches #12 product of the day with 140+ upvotes.
YC W26 Demo Day. ZeroSettle presents alongside 195 other companies in what was widely called one of YC's strongest batches. Full SDK suite (iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter) is live.
Active development continues: ZeroSettleKit (iOS) updated April 14; React Native and Flutter SDKs updated April 10. Documentation site live at docs.zerosettle.io. Team remains 2 people.
The Details That Stick
Both co-founders are ex-Apple engineers. They helped build the operating systems and billing infrastructure they are now routing payments around.
15 minutes to integrate. That is less time than most developers spend reading Apple's StoreKit documentation before giving up and paying the 30%.
The repository "JustOne" - "habit tracking, but monetized" - lives on ZeroSettle's GitHub. The founders built their own app as a live test of their own SDK.
In BYOS mode, developers pay 0.5% vs Apple's 30%. That is a 60x reduction in fees for developers willing to manage their own Stripe account.
ZeroSettleEscrowKit - a separate SDK for crypto and escrow payments - quietly exists in their GitHub. The billing infrastructure ambitions appear broader than just the App Store.
A team of two people shipped iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter SDKs - plus full documentation, a dashboard, and a compliance layer - before Demo Day.