EU antitrust complaint against Apple Pay was supported by PayPal

The European Union has shared an earlier Statement of Objections in which it criticizes Apple’s restriction on NFC technology for the iPhone. Now a report from Bloomberg reveals that PayPal was one of the companies that supported the EU’s antitrust complaints against Apple Pay.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the report alleges that PayPal assisted in the filing of a formal antitrust lawsuit against Apple Pay and Apple Pay with European Commission. PayPal offers Android users a tap-to-pay feature that uses NFC. However, the iPhone does not allow the service.

However, Bloomberg says that PayPal was only “one of multiple companies” that made formal complaints about the situation to the European Commission.

iPhone 6 was the first Apple smartphone to feature NFC technology, which allows data transmission between two devices when they are in close proximity to each other. NFC technology on iPhones was only available to Apple Pay. This company allows users to register credit or debit cards and pay in store using their iPhones, Apple Watches, or their Apple Watch.

In 2017, Apple partially opened up access to the iPhone’s NFC chip to developers with iOS 11. However, the company never allowed payment apps to use this API. In a recent statement, Apple said that Apple Pay is “only one of many options available to European consumers for making payments,” although it’s the only one that works with NFC on the iPhone.

Apple introduced “Tap toPay” earlier this year for iPhone. This turns your phone into a contactless terminal that can be used to receive payments from third-party applications. This doesn’t allow other apps to use NFC payments on iPhone.

9to5Mac’s Take

While today’s EU declaration is only an “initial view”, it’s clear that Apple faces many challenges in restricting the features of its devices to its platforms. Apple may have to allow NFC access to developers in the near future.

As suggested by 9to5Mac’s Ben Lovejoy, Apple could easily get rid of all the antitrust allegations by dropping some of these restrictions on developers, while also letting users choose which apps they want to use as default. Apple doesn’t appear to be willing to compromise.

Personally, I don’t think opening up the iOS ecosystem would hurt users or even Apple itself. Lovejoy stated that most people would continue to use Apple services by default. In terms of security, the company should have ways in place to make sure that legitimate payment apps can access the NFC API.