Apple Settles EU Case By Opening Its iPhone Payment System To Rivals (theguardian.com) 19
The European Commission has approved Apple's commitments to open its "tap to pay" iPhone payment system to rivals, avoiding a potentially hefty fine. The Guardian reports: Regulators had accused Apple in 2022 of abusing its dominant position by limiting access to its mobile payment technology. Apple responded by proposing in January to allow third-party mobile wallet and payment service providers access to the contactless payment function in its iOS operating system. After Apple tweaked its proposals following testing and feedback, the commission said those "final commitments" would address its competition concerns.
"Today's commitments end our Apple Pay investigation," Margrethe Vestager, the commission's executive vice-president for competition policy, told a press briefing in Brussels. "The commitments bring important changes to how Apple operates in Europe to the benefit of competitors and customers." Apple said in a prepared statement that it is "providing developers in the European Economic Area with an option to enable NFC [near-field communication] contactless payments and contactless transactions" for uses like car keys, corporate badges, hotel keys and concert tickets. [...] Apple must open up its payment system in the EU's 27 countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein by July 25.
"As of this date, developers will be able to offer a mobile wallet on the iPhone with the same 'tap-and-go' experience that so far has been reserved for Apple Pay," Vestager said. The changes will remain in force for a decade and will be monitored by a trustee. Breaches of EU competition law can draw fines worth up to 10% of a company's annual global revenue, which in Apple's case could have amounted to tens of billions of euros.
"Today's commitments end our Apple Pay investigation," Margrethe Vestager, the commission's executive vice-president for competition policy, told a press briefing in Brussels. "The commitments bring important changes to how Apple operates in Europe to the benefit of competitors and customers." Apple said in a prepared statement that it is "providing developers in the European Economic Area with an option to enable NFC [near-field communication] contactless payments and contactless transactions" for uses like car keys, corporate badges, hotel keys and concert tickets. [...] Apple must open up its payment system in the EU's 27 countries plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein by July 25.
"As of this date, developers will be able to offer a mobile wallet on the iPhone with the same 'tap-and-go' experience that so far has been reserved for Apple Pay," Vestager said. The changes will remain in force for a decade and will be monitored by a trustee. Breaches of EU competition law can draw fines worth up to 10% of a company's annual global revenue, which in Apple's case could have amounted to tens of billions of euros.
Who does this benefit? (Score:3)
Re: Who does this benefit? (Score:2)
Right, I trust (mostly) apple to at least put effort into making Apple Pay secure. I donâ(TM)t trust the random bank whose IT department decided they couldnâ(TM)t be are supporting Apple Pay, so theyâ(TM)ll just throw their own thing together.
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Hell... it may be confirmation bias because it pisses me off the most in these cases because it's where the most damage can be done; but I've observed that banks and other financial institutions are reliably the WORST offenders in a couple of very basic security fails.
1). Password length limits, sometimes as low as 20 or even 16 characters; which means they're a bunch of idiots who are not hashing passwords but just storing them (hopefully encrypted at least) in some stupidly-short database fields.
2). Restr
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Apple pay is so secure that bogus charges can happen: https://forums.macrumors.com/t... [macrumors.com]
Re: Who does this benefit? (Score:1)
That has literally nothing to do with Apple Pay, and seems to have been an issue with the App Store billing.
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The one possibility of a end user benefit would be will the NFC for a car.
Apple's NFC is already open for non-payment things, and there are already cars that use iPhones as digital keys. Some cars to require their specific app, some don't (after initial setup that is; in those cases the key is stored in Wallet after being set up). Non-payment NFC usage on iPhone has been open for a while.
This new event is specifically using NFC for payments, which Apple had kept closed and only able to be used with Apple Pay.
If I have to open an app, I can already open the app and unlock the car.
Rather than cars, I think this will be the double-edged sword with o
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Rather than cars, I think this will be the double-edged sword with opening NFC for other payment processes. While yes I do agree that sealing it away solely for Apple Pay is possibly anti-competitive, I expect competitors to be just as dickish likewise. If a bank doesn't HAVE to participate in Apple Pay (which does admittedly require them a give up a sliver of the transaction fee to Apple) to facilitate mobile payments, that bank likely won't because profits over everything. Instead, you'll have to open the bank's app. Or Venmo's app, or Zelle's, or everything else. Everyone will lock "their" NFC payments and "their" credit cards and stuff behind "their" app, and it will no longer be a simple, streamlined, single interface like having and using Apple Pay-enabled cards in Wallet is.
I am in EU and while my bank (ING) has its own app for a while (it predates Google Wallet/Pay), they encourage people to use Google/Apple/Garmin pay instead.
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I am in EU and while my bank (ING) has its own app for a while (it predates Google Wallet/Pay), they encourage people to use Google/Apple/Garmin pay instead.
Really? ING's NFC app launched before 2011?
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Banks are all about money and is more cost efficient to NOT do their own thing.
Re: lol it doesn't (Score:3)
With succes. They won an award. Just googled it. In 2021 it won an award for best banking app world wide, according to SIA.
Guess they think different.
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Who does it benefit? Tim Sweeney.
As for users? nope. The existing solution just works. Same as the Google and Samsung variants. Just enroll your cards and it works.
I suppose there could be a use case for WeChat to use NFC instead of barcode, but.... why? meh.
As for cars... nope. My wife's car (BMW Z-4) recognizes my Pixel phone and her iPhone automatically: It will unlock doors or trunk, adjust seat/mirrors/steering wheel positions automatically when we change drivers, and enable engine start. There
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It’s all Mastercard, Visa, AMEX, and Discover either way, right?
I guess the major actors will be payment clearance systems. See European Mobile Payment Systems Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] These companies build on the existing national payment systems (ATMs, card payments), and are owned and operated by large bank associations.
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EU doesnt seem to give a fuck about consumers, just companies. It is all up in arms about ensuring competition that consumers don't ask for. If they fuck things up for consumers, they just don't care. Those motherfuckers are why I have to "accept cookies" 50 times every god damned day.
So fucking glad I don't live there.
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It benefits the banks because they get rid of the Apple middleman and get at the sweet sweet consumer spending data they love.
Presumably that would translate to benefits for the consumer.
You know, like trickle down economics - it benefits the banks, therefore it benefits the consumer.
But hey, the EU is trying to promote competition in the area. Lower fees for the banks (not dependent on Apple) must be good, right? I meant, just like having multiple app stores is good for the consumer, having multiple bankin
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It’s all Mastercard, Visa, AMEX, and Discover either way, right?
No it's not. Europe doesn't worship credit cards. Most countries in Europe use bank issued debit cards. The benefit here is that we can use them without a 3rd party gating the experience.
For example with my bank on my Android phone:
Banking app handles the debit transaction. Banking app handles the credit transaction.
And with my bank on my work iPhone:
Debit transaction not possible because Apple doesn't have a specific agreement with my bank. Apple handles the credit transaction via their agreement with Mast
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More importantly nobody irrelevant takes a percentage cut of the transactions on those controlled debit cards. They are fully funded by a flat fee of a couple of cents on each transaction.
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Consumers benefit from competition, like there is competition over credit cards. Some offer cash back, some offer no fees on foreign transactions, some offer free insurance etc.
It also offers consumers who have Android as well the option to use Google Pay and the cards they already have stored on that. Keeps all of the store cards and transaction history in one place.