In Europe, Apple agrees to open up iPhone NFC to all payment apps

Following Apple’s move to USB-C or the App Store, the European Commission has made an issue of the use of the NFC chip in iPhones for payment apps and third-party services. Apple is committed to unlocking access to this key element of its Apple Pay service. All Apple platform competitors will be able to offer contactless payment transactions on the iPhone with their own apps. Something that Apple didn’t allow, which imposed a financial partnership.

However, the advantage for the user is that the operation is transparent, with no app to open beforehand. It is Wallet that takes control automatically by displaying saved payment cards. As part of this proposal, third-party services will also be able to do so without going into the wallet.

In its press release that summarizes more than three and a half years of investigation, the European Commission believes that Apple “ (has) significant market power in the smart mobile device market and (enjoys) a dominant position in the mobile wallet market ” By preventing developers from freely accessing standard contactless payment technology, Apple is violating competition rules, Brussels believes, as a matter of course.

In response, and clearly aware that its choices were no longer valid in the face of potential accusations of abuse of power, Apple proposed a series of changes: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 using Apple Pay or Apple Wallet;
• Apply the commitments to all third-party mobile wallet application developers established in the European Economic Area and to all iOS users with an Apple ID registered in the EEA;
• Provide additional properties and functions, including default selection of preferred payment app, access to authentication properties such as FaceID, and an opt-out mechanism. »

Apple has to define the criteria “ Fair, objective, transparent and non-discriminatory » Candidates to use NFC, they will get license for this. Independent experts will be assigned to study the reasons for denial of eligibility pronounced by Apple.

The press release only mentions the European framework for these measures. Which would allow Apple to continue to change anything in its other markets… as long as they don’t act like Brussels. 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 will be monitored. The European Commission has submitted the concessions offered by Apple to other interested parties who now have a month to comment.