WebXR Apps On Quest's Meta Horizon Store Can Now Use In-App Payments

WebXR apps packaged as PWAs on the Meta Horizon Store can now use in-app payments, letting web developers monetize their experiences.

Of course, what makes WebXR unique is that you don't need an app store. You can host WebXR experiences on the open web, without the approval of any XR platform holder, and anyone can access your experience through their headset's web browser.

But since Meta Connect 2024, Meta has also allowed WebXR experiences packaged as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to be distributed on Quest's app store, the Meta Horizon Store, using Google's Bubblewrap.

Now, these WebXR apps can be monetized using Meta's in-app payments (IAPs) system.

To implement IAPs, WebXR developers use the Digital Goods API, a new web standard for PWAs to integrate with app stores. To the user, the payment requests are presented as they would be from a native app.

What WebXR developers tell UploadVR they really want, though, is the ability to easily monetize on the open web, via the Horizon OS web browser. This is possible on Apple Vision Pro's Safari browser using Apple Pay, and in Google Chrome via Google Pay, but Meta doesn't have an equivalent yet, and the vast majority of WebXR traffic comes from Quest headsets.

Still, the ability to monetize via the store is better than nothing, and this could see WebXR taken more seriously as a development path.