Highlight: The purchase of apps by black card is flooding the App Store, and the bank, seller and the sale platform, China’s C2C giant Taobao.com, are all involved in such transactions. Who is responsible, and what measures could developers or Apple take to resolve the issue? Bridge IP Law Commentary provides the below essay for consideration.

In China, the credit card thieves choose the Apple App Store to utilize their stolen cards through the purchasing of popular apps. They purchase the popular apps in the Store through the unauthorized use of stolen credit cards and then sell such apps by C2C websites like eBay. This type of transaction is called purchase by black card in China. Under such purchase, the Chinese clients could only pay 1 RMB for apps priced at 1 US dollar, though the official exchange rate is 6.5 RMB to 1 US dollar. First the prospective customer sends the seller the link of the app that the customer would like, then the seller purchases the app with the stolen credit card, and then sends the information for the customer to download the app and pay the seller. For all steps, it only cost several minutes. It’s simple and convenient, and so purchase by the black card is flooding in China. It’s even reported that the bad debt rate hereby produced is more than 80% for the App Store.