The European Commission announced on Friday that Apple is ready to agree to allow competing systems for its “Apple Pay” service within the European Union. The Commission stated that it will evaluate this proposal from the giant American company, which has been accused of undermining competition in contactless payment systems through its phones, according to a report from the French news agency.
In a statement, the Commission mentioned that “to dispel the Commission’s competition concerns,” Apple has proposed granting external providers the ability to access its iPhone devices through the “NFC” function that enables communication between devices and payment terminals in stores.
For payments, users will have the freedom to choose between the “Apple Pay” service and other services.
This commitment will be valid for ten years throughout the European Economic Area (the 27 EU countries plus Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein). This will apply to all users of the “iOS” operating system who have Apple devices in these countries.
The European Commission, responsible for monitoring competition in the European Union, called on all interested parties to provide their comments on the commitments made by Apple within one month.
In May 2022, the European Commission accused Apple of hindering competition in contactless payment systems on its phones. Brussels opened an investigation in June 2020 following complaints from European banks.
The proposed solution from the American tech giant involves allowing competing systems with its internal “Apple Pay” system to access the “NFC” function for free “thanks to a set of application programming interfaces,” as explained by the Commission.
The French news agency reported that the Commission emphasized that “Apple will create the necessary application programming interfaces to allow equivalent access to NFC components” using technology that enables “secure storage of payment credential data.”
Currently, “Apple Pay” is the only payment service on Apple devices, as the group has never allowed other app developers to operate on its devices.
Starting from the beginning of March, Apple, along with five other digital giants (Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, and Chinese ByteDance, the owner of TikTok), will be subject to the new Digital Markets Act, which introduces stricter rules to stop anti-competitive practices in the European Union.
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