2024-01-19 20:54:16
After having made Apple move on USB-C or on the App Store, the European Commission has made a point on the use of the NFC chip in iPhones for payment apps and third-party services. Apple is committed to unlocking access to this pivotal element of its Apple Pay service. All competitors of the Apple platform will be able to offer contactless payment transactions on iPhone from their own application. Something that Apple did not allow, which imposed a financial partnership.
The advantage, however, for the user is that the operation is transparent, there is no app to open beforehand. It’s Wallet that automatically takes control by displaying the saved payment cards. As part of this proposal, third-party services will also be able to do without going to Wallet.
In his communiqué which summarizes more than three and a half years of investigation, the European Commission considers that Apple “ [dispose] significant market power in the smart mobile device market and [jouit] a dominant position in the mobile wallet markets “. By preventing developers from freely accessing standard contactless payment technology, Apple is infringing competition rules, Brussels believes, as a preliminary matter.
In response, and clearly aware that its choices were not tenable any longer in the face of a probable accusation of abuse of a dominant position, Apple proposed a series of changes:
- “Enable third-party mobile wallet and payment service providers to access and interact with NFC functionality on iOS devices through a set of application programming interfaces for free and without having to use Apple Pay or Apple Wallet;
- Apply the commitments to all third-party mobile wallet app developers established in the European Economic Area and all iOS users with an Apple ID registered in the EEA;
- Provide additional properties and functions, including default choice of preferred payment apps, access to authentication properties like FaceID, and an opt-out mechanism. »
Apple will have to define criteria “ fair, objective, transparent and non-discriminatory » for candidates to use NFC, they will obtain a license for this. Independent experts will be commissioned to study the reasons for a refusal of eligibility pronounced by Apple.
The press release only speaks of a European framework for these measures. Which will allow Apple to continue to change nothing in its other markets… until they act in the same way as Brussels. As for European users, it is expected that they will be able to use these new payment possibilities anywhere in the world.
The agreement, if ratified, will be valid for 10 years and its application monitored. The European Commission has submitted the concessions made by Apple to other interested parties who now have one month to give their opinion.
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