Back in late January, social sharing e-commercial platform Fancy.com included the option to pay for products in bitcoin. That capability carried over to the company’s mobile application — but as of today, the pay-in-bitcoin feature in Fancy’s iOS app is no longer available.
In version 3.3.0 of the app, released March 5th, the change-log says: “Removed Bitcoin per Apple’s request”.
Certainly interesting, but surprising? Not in the least. Cupertino-based Apple has started an all-out offensive against any applications that allow bitcoin payments (informational apps, on the other hand, are permitted). The reason? Apple’s policies simply won’t allow for it.
The bitcoin community’s feathers became ruffled just a few weeks ago when the tech giant pulled Blockchain.info’s app from the App Store. Some users retaliated by destroying their iPhones in spectacular fashion.
Before that, we saw the removal of Australian bitcoin exchange CoinJar’s app in early January, along with the Coinbase app, which was available for downloading on the App Store for almost one month before being removed.
The removal of the feature has the Bitcoin community over at Reddit.com, a social sharing website, upset.
We’ll refrain from quoting the top-rated comment due to obscenity, but another user reminded others: “Please remember that Android phones still exist and have no such limitations by the publisher, nobody is forcing you to use an iPhone.”
newsBTC reached out to Fancy earlier this afternoon with request for comment and a more in-depth explanation, but did not receive a reply before this article went live. We’ll update accordingly, should we get some clarification from the company.