It does not matter how we interpret the guidelines. The fact is that our app has been developed and tested, but was rejected by the app store reviewer citing this reason.
We believe we fall under the exception of "business databases" which are exempted from this restriction, but the reviewer does not believe so. Guess who won.
We are not trying to use the app as an acquisition channel, we don't believe our customers would discover our service through an app store search. We want to make it more easy for our current customers to view their data on a mobile device, the app is pretty simple, coded in react native and also available on the play store.
What was their specific rejection reason? Generally the rule is you can offer a service paid for elsewhere if you don't link to it and don't tell people you can pay elsewhere.
I have apps on my phone that accept payment only on the web.
Can you release the app using enterprise distribution? While not ideal, this will at least allow your customers to use your app instead of getting nothing.
Enterprise distribution is meant just for internal use of the company using it and distributing to customers via that method is exactly why Facebook and Google had their Apple enterprise services disabled a few months ago (although I’m sure they resolved their issues with Apple to get them enabled again)
We believe we fall under the exception of "business databases" which are exempted from this restriction, but the reviewer does not believe so. Guess who won.
We are not trying to use the app as an acquisition channel, we don't believe our customers would discover our service through an app store search. We want to make it more easy for our current customers to view their data on a mobile device, the app is pretty simple, coded in react native and also available on the play store.