News
The Commission will close its four-year antitrust investigation into Apple’s mobile payment platform Apple Pay following the US tech giant’s decision to open up its tap-and-go payments tech to third parties
The European Commission (EC) has announced that it will close its investigation into anticompetitive practices related to Apple’s iPhone’s contactless payments policies.
The investigation was opened four years ago, when European regulators took issue with the fact that Apple would not allow third-parties access to the iPhone’s Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, in effect forcing customers to use Apple’s Apple Pay platform if they wated to make contactless payments.
The EC accused Apple of using its dominant market position to suppress competition – a charge that is all too familiar to Apple, who was simultaneously fighting numerous additional antitrust cases brought by the EC, including against iOS.
Apple fought against these accusations for almost four years, before presenting the EC with a number of concessions back in January. These concessions included a new set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that would allow approved developers to make use of the iPhone’s NFC capabilities.
Now, after testing these concessions and verifying with interested third parties, the EC says that it is happy the matter is resolved and so will close its investigation.
“The European Commission has made commitments offered by Apple legally binding under EU antitrust rules,” reads the official announcement. “The commitments address the Commission’s competition concerns relating to Apple’s refusal to grant rivals access to a standard technology used for contactless payments with iPhones in stores (‘Near-Field-Communication (NFC)’ or ‘tap and go’).”
“From now on, Apple can no longer use its control over the iPhone ecosystem to keep other mobile wallets out of the market,” explained Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. “Competing wallet developers, as well as consumers, will benefit from these changes, opening up innovation and choice, while keeping payments secure.”
These new policies apply to Apple devices registered within the European Economic Area, spanning 30 countries. They do not, however, resolve the issue in the USA, where NFC payments are part of a wider antitrust lawsuit currently being brought against Apple for monopolising the smartphone market.
Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter
Also in the news:
Australian Government and AWS Collaborate to Strengthen country’s Cybersecurity
Solving congestion challenges in FTTP deployment
Vodafone Invests £120m in AI Chatbot ‘SuperTOBi’