The complaint filed by the online payment system in 2019 reportedly motivated European authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into Apple’s practices.
Apple Pay is in the sights of the European Commission which has just detailed this Monday, May 2, 2022 the various points leading it to believe that Apple is using anti-competitive practices.
PayPal very early protested against Apple’s refusal to open access to its NFC chip
The American manufacturer’s mobile payment system has however already been singled out by another major player in the sector, PayPal, which filed several complaints with the European Commission in 2019 about Apple Pay.
According to certain sources familiar with the matter and quoted by BloombergPayPal’s approach would have ” spurred a formal antitrust complaint against Apple vis-à-vis Apple Pay.
The payment company notably accuses Apple of blocking access to the NFC chip of its iPhones, which precisely allows contactless payment on all compatible payment terminals. It is therefore impossible for it to offer its users on iOS a contactless payment functionality linked directly to their online account.
Apple’s closed ecosystem increasingly threatened by the European Union
However, PayPal is not the only company to have presented its complaints to the European Commission: many other companies have complained about Apple’s anti-competitive practices which prevent any competition in the mobile payment market.
The Californian manufacturer reacted to its attacks by using its favorite data security argument. Apple explains that Apple Pay is more secure than other Android mobile payment systems, which is why it strictly prohibits the use of NFC to carry out transactions in third-party applications.
Not sure, however, that this argument can convince Brussels. Indeed, the European Union agreed a few days ago on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a text which aims to force web giants to open their platforms to other services and not to limit their technologies to their own applications.
Pending the effective application of the DMA, the European Commission should in the short term formulate a formal charge against Apple and embark on a long-term legal fight.
On the same subject :
Europe wants to curb the expansion of GAFAM with new normative constraints
Source : Bloomberg
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