The closure of the payment system NFC (almost) no one likes Apple via Apple Pay, except Apple itself. The European Antitrust, which in 2020 launched an investigation into the instrument, does not like it, and neither does the Commission. But discontent is even more widespread, indeed apparently their origin is not at all institutionalhow much rather privateand the second would foment the first.
Reference goes to PayPalwhich in the world of tap-to-pay payment systems is Apple’s rival: well, according to reports from Bloomberg, there would be the company founded in 1999 by Elon Musk (and others) behind the complaint of anti-competitive behavior of Tim Cook & associates to the European institutions. For now this is an informal complaint, essentially a recall, but the situation could soon become critical.
iPhone allows you to use the NFC module only for Apple Pay, and not for other alternative payment systems, including PayPal. This is, in fact, the accusation against the Californian company, guilty of reserving the digital payment functionality for a proprietary service, excluding the competition. And there is not only PayPal behind the complaints addressed to the antitrust and the European Commission: no names are leaked – maximum confidentiality in this sense – but the intolerance on the closure of Apple would be decidedly widespread.
To suffer the consequences, says Margrethe Vestager (vice president of the European Commission), are the consumers, because by limiting access to the NFC chip Apple would be slowing down innovation. The Cupertino company makes it known that “will continue to work with the Commission to ensure that European consumers have access to the payment option of their choice in a safe environment“How this could happen is not known, given that Apple itself has repeatedly reiterated how opening the payment system to other platforms means increasing the risks for the safety of users.
