App Store Compliance

EU DSA trader status: the App Store trader requirements that pull apps from EU sale

EU DSA trader status now gates App Store sales: declare your public trader contact info (name, address, email, phone) or apps get pulled from EU storefronts.

By · · 8 min read

The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) added a requirement to App Store Connect that is unlike the others in Apple’s checklist: it isn’t enforced by App Review at submission time, and it isn’t optional. If you haven’t declared trader status and provided verified contact information, Apple removes your app from sale across all 27 EU storefronts until you do. This already happened to thousands of apps when the deadline passed — the removal is automatic, it applies to apps that were already approved and live, and it has nothing to do with whether your app changed.

This post covers what trader status is, the exact public contact information the DSA requires, what happens if you don’t provide it, and how a hosted support/contact page satisfies the public-disclosure side of the requirement.

This is not an App Review rejection. Most compliance failures on this site bounce a submission back. Trader status is different: a non-declaration or a failed verification quietly delists a live app from the EU. There’s no rejection email with a guideline number — the app just stops appearing in EU search and product pages.

What “trader status” is

Article 30 of the Digital Services Act requires online platforms that allow consumers to enter into distance contracts with traders to collect and display the trader’s identity and contact details. The App Store is such a platform, so Apple has to know — and publish — whether each developer is acting as a trader or a non-trader.

Apple’s Trader status in App Store Connect documentation defines the two categories:

  • Trader — you distribute apps as a commercial, business, craft, or professional activity. This covers anyone charging for an app, running in-app purchases or subscriptions, or selling anything (including ad-supported apps that generate revenue). The overwhelming majority of paid and freemium apps fall here.
  • Non-trader — you’re an individual distributing free apps with no commercial activity. This is a narrow category. If you have any monetization, you are almost certainly a trader.

You declare your status per Apple account in App Store Connect under Business → Trader Status (account holders and admins only). Declaring trader requires you to submit contact details, which Apple then verifies before your apps can stay on EU storefronts.

The required public trader contact information

The part that matters for this site is what the DSA forces you to make public. When you declare as a trader, Apple displays your contact information on your App Store product pages in the EU, in the developer information section. Apple requires, and publishes, the following:

Field Required Public on EU App Store page
Trader name (legal/business name) Yes Yes
Address (registered business address) Yes Yes
Email address Yes Yes
Phone number Yes Yes

There is no way to declare as a trader without making this contact information public — that’s the entire point of Article 30. The address and phone number are the fields indie developers balk at, because the natural instinct is to not publish a home address and personal mobile number on a public web page that every EU user of the app can see.

That instinct is correct, and the fix is the same one businesses have used for decades: publish a business contact point — a registered business address (or a commercial mail-forwarding / registered-agent address where your jurisdiction allows it) and a dedicated support phone line and email — rather than your personal details. The DSA requires the information to be accurate and reachable, not that it be your home. What you cannot do is provide fake or unreachable details: Apple verifies them, and Article 30 obliges the platform to remove traders whose information turns out to be unreliable.

The consequence: removed from EU storefronts

Apple is explicit about the enforcement mechanism. Per the same trader requirements documentation, if you don’t provide trader contact information and complete verification:

“Your apps will be removed from the App Store in the European Union until you provide the required trader information.”

Concretely, that means:

  1. All your apps disappear from every EU storefront — not search-deranked, removed. EU users can’t find or download them, and existing users can’t redownload.
  2. The removal is account-wide, not per-app. One missing declaration takes down your whole catalog in the EU.
  3. It applies retroactively to live, approved apps. This is not a new-submission gate; apps that have been shipping for years were delisted when the deadline passed.
  4. Verification can fail later. If Apple can’t verify the details you gave — the address doesn’t resolve, the phone doesn’t connect — your apps are removed even after an initial declaration.
  5. Reinstatement isn’t instant. Once you submit valid information and Apple re-verifies it, the apps return to EU storefronts, but you’ve lost the intervening days of EU availability and downloads.

For an app that earns meaningfully from European users, an account-wide EU delisting is far more expensive than any single App Review rejection.

How a hosted support/contact page satisfies the public-contact-info need

Declaring trader status in App Store Connect is something only you can do — no tool fills in that form for you. But the DSA’s underlying obligation is to have accurate, reachable, public contact information, and that’s exactly what your app already needs for a different reason: Apple’s Guideline 1.5 Support URL requirement, which mandates a public page where users can reach you. The two requirements ask for the same underlying thing — a real, public, reachable point of contact.

A single hosted support/contact page lets you publish the trader contact point — business name, business address, support email, and support phone — once, on a URL you control, so that:

  • The same address/email/phone you declare to Apple for DSA trader verification is publicly visible and consistent with what’s on your App Store page.
  • Your Guideline 1.5 Support URL points at a page that actually shows reachable contact details above the fold, on a phone, the way App Review checks for it (see creating a compliant App Store support URL).
  • You’re publishing a business contact point on your own domain instead of scattering a personal address across an App Store listing and a half-built marketing site.

It also slots into the rest of the EU/App Store paperwork. Trader status sits alongside the privacy policy, account deletion, and the other items every app needs — for the full list, see every URL and file Apple requires for an iOS App Store submission.

OrbitKit handles the public page: the support page generator produces a hosted contact page with your business name, address, support email, and phone — formatted to render correctly on iPhone with contact info above the fold. It’s the page you point your App Store Connect Support URL at, and the public contact point that keeps your declared DSA trader details consistent. Free to build and preview; $5/mo per app to take it live on your own domain.

What to do this week

  1. Determine your status honestly. If your app makes any money — paid, IAP, subscriptions, or ads — you are a trader. Don’t declare non-trader to avoid publishing contact details; that’s the path to an EU removal when verification or a complaint catches it.
  2. Set up a business contact point. A business/registered-agent address, a dedicated support email, and a support phone number you’ll actually answer — not your home address and personal mobile.
  3. Declare and verify in App Store Connect under Business → Trader Status, using those business details.
  4. Publish the same details on a public support page and set it as your Support URL, so your DSA disclosure and your Guideline 1.5 page agree. Start free.

The DSA trader requirement is one of the few App Store obligations that can pull an already-shipping app, account-wide, out of an entire market with no rejection email to warn you. The work to satisfy it is small; the cost of skipping it is your whole EU revenue.

Source documentation

If any of the URLs above breaks — Apple and the EU both restructure their pages occasionally — drop us a note at help@orbitkit.io and we’ll update the post.