Digital Services Act Question. Traders or Non Traders

Yes this was a bad decision to call them both Garmin Pay

flocsy🤠 said:

Yes this was a bad decision to call them both Garmin Pay

Agreed. It has led to endless confusion from regular users (and even one big sports tech blogger [*] - not DCR) who incorrectly assumed that Garmin Pay for the CIQ store is identical to Garmin Pay for contactless payments, which would mean that the latter is subject to the same restrictions as the former, when it comes to supported banks.

[*] This blogger wrote a whole article about how monetization was coming to the CIQ store, it would use Garmin Pay, but don't worry, you can get around Garmin Pay's lack of support for your bank by purchasing a prepaid credit card (or whatever). But ofc the limited availability of Garmin Pay in certain countries applies to Garmin Pay for contactless payments, not Garmin Pay for the Connect IQ Store.

It doesn't help that the Garmin page for Garmin Pay seems to imply the above assumption is true.

https://www.garmin.com/en-CA/garmin-pay/

Most of this page talks about Garmin Pay as in contactless payments, but at the bottom, it talks about using Garmin Pay in the Connect IQ store. Not only do they have the same name, they are referred to in the same official Garmin page as if they are synonymous.

So it's really hard to blame anyone for believing that the two usages of Garmin Pay are identical.

It's kind of a replay of the problem where "Connect" and "Connect IQ" are so similar that people constantly post Garmin Connect feature requests in the Connect IQ App Ideas forum.

FlowState said:

What about apps that were last updated long ago and are no longer being maintained by the developer? Perhaps the developer is no longer responsive/reachable?

That's a good question, and something we haven't discussed much. At the moment, I don't know the answer, but we generally want to avoid removing content if possible. I'll have to ask about this.

flocsy🤠 said:

Doesn't it mean that users "in the EU" * can't download the app?

Prior to mid-January, if a developer was not verified under DSA regardless of whether their app is monetized it would be region-limited to be available only to users outside the EEA because we initially believed anyone distributing apps, even for free, would be considered traders under the law. We have since received updated guidance, and now anyone should be able to download the app you linked since it is not monetized even though FlowState is not yet verified.

Under the new paradigm, only monetized apps are affected and we just hide those apps generally until the developer's DSA registration is complete. There are very few developers I'm aware of that have been affected—we had many developers register over the past year already.

7780811 said:

I believe based on my experience, that the Garmin Merchant Monetization system requires that the IQ buyer has no option but to pay Garmin with Garmin Pay.

We give developers the option to use Garmin's payment system or a third-party payment system on an app-by-app basis. It's true that if someone chooses to monetize an app to use Garmin's payment system there are no other options to purchase that particular app outside of what's available in the GarminPay wallet. You could publish two identical listings—one that uses Garmin's payment solution, and one that uses a third-party solution, but I think that would be confusing for users. 

Brandon.ConnectIQ said:

Prior to mid-January, if a developer was not verified under DSA regardless of whether their app is monetized it would be region-limited to be available only to users outside the EEA because we initially believed anyone distributing apps, even for free, would be considered traders under the law. We have since received updated guidance, and now anyone should be able to download the app you linked since it is not monetized even though FlowState is not yet verified.

Oh interesting, thank you for the clarification! That is welcome news.

7780811 said:

Thanks, great reply.

Brandon.ConnectIQ said:

For individual developers (sole proprietors):

• Support Email Address
• City/State/Country

Great.  That's what I wanted to hear.

That has made things much clearer.

This is great. So for confirmation, phone Number is NOT listed and FULL address is not listed

I am part of the (problem) and just found my apps all are hidden. I adopted the "wait and see" approach exactly because of the above ( Full Address + Phone number). 

I will need to see what I can do to register. What's a D-U-N-S for example and how to get one is also something I need to find out.

Nikeow said:

So for confirmation, phone Number is NOT listed and FULL address is not listed

Nikeow said:

What's a D-U-N-S for example and how to get one is also something I need to find out.

Garmin requires a DUNS number for companies/organizations, not individuals (sole proprietors). If you register as a company/organization, your full address and phone number will be displayed in the store. If you register as an individual, you don't need a DUNS number (and your address and phone number won't be exposed).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Universal_Numbering_System

TL;DR DUNS is a worldwide system which assigns a unique ID (DUNS Number) to a single business entity.