PayPal's complaints may have been a major reason why the EU filed a complaint against Apple on Monday.
In the complaint it is claimedthat Apple is limiting competition in the mobile wallet market and preventing developers from using the technology to promote its own Apple Pay solution. Now Bloomberg has learned that one of the voices that initiated the EU antitrust complaint against Apple was rival payment platform PayPal. PayPal offers tap-to-pay options on Android phones and hopes to one day introduce the same feature on the iPhone. Apple has long restricted the use of its NFC (Near Field Communication) chip to Apple Pay. The Cupertino tech giant makes it clear that this makes Apple Pay much more secure than third-party payment apps on Android.
Apple Pay: First complaints arrived in 2019
Apple recently opened up the NFC chip to app developers so they could use it for the Apple Tap to Pay feature. The new feature allows users to accept payments by using the iPhone as a point of service. As Bloomberg reported, but Apple does not allow competing services to use the chip for payments with the iPhone. The EU investigation officially began in June 2020. But the regulator received complaints from Apple Pay competitors as early as 2019. In October 2019, it reached out to EU online retailers to learn about the impact of Apple and its payment system. It was originally reported that the EU would issue a statement of objections in October 2021, shortly after Tim Cook met with Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, in New York. (Photo by Gargantiopa / Bigstockphoto)
