20 ms·

Apple to face EU antitrust charge over NFC chip

170 points by nojito 5y ago

lapetitejort 5y ago
When Animal Crossing on the Switch took off last year, I heard of some nefarious characters who would use Android phones with NFC capability to write Amiibo (Nintendo toys-to-life products) data to NFC tags, then use those tags in game. Such a thing is only possible when the manufacturer allows the user to utilize the hardware they purchased.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > nefarious That's bit harsh don't you think? It's a bit like Ford selling a v6 Mustang with 4 functional cylinders and a switch on the dashboard that enables the other two but you're not allowed to flip the switch unless you send Ford $$$. Nintendo could have easily prevented copying tags by writing a signature based on the tag's MAC to the data on the tag itself. The Switch would just read the tag, generate a signature and compare it to the data read.
  - lapetitejort 5y ago
    I'm being facetious, in a humorous attempt to deflect any criticism against piracy. Nintendo sold Amiibo cards in blind packs, then later discontinued them. Some of those cards are rare and sought after. I have no problem with people downloading a few hundreds bytes of data to unlock parts of software they already paid for.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      Nothing to detract from your point, but I just want to reinforce in general to anyone reading this that cloning an NFC tag is very likely not piracy. An NFC code isn't a creative work that can be copyrighted, and it's a stretch to call an NFC tag a DRM system. IANAL, but I suspect that Nintendo would have a hard time arguing in a court that aftermarket Amiibo cards are doing anything illegal at all (of course, provided those cards don't violate trademark or have copyrighted graphics/characters printed on them).
      - detaro 5y ago
        I could see an argument that the card is a license key for the functionality activated by it.
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      > I'm being facetious That's a dangerous game around these parts. > I have no problem with people downloading a few hundreds bytes of data to unlock parts of software they already paid for. I agree, the locked content is taking up storage space on their device and for many it's permanently inaccessible due to the scarcity of the cards.
      - lapetitejort 5y ago
        > That's a dangerous game around these parts. Subtlety is lost in text, and wasted on the technically-minded. > the locked content is taking up storage space Modders noticed unknown amiibo codes in the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild version and were able to create tags months before the amiibos were actually released. So in this case the locked content is released earlier than designed.
- astraloverflow 5y ago
  How is that "nefarious"? It's not like using a copy nfc tag is giving some players an unfair competitive edge (animal crossing is supposed to be laidback right?). Also, there is a limited supply of any given amiibo and so when one suddenly becomes popular (* cough * Ankha * cough *) many players get priced out.
  - lapetitejort 5y ago
    "I heard of some nefarious characters" is code for "I used my Android phone to write NFC tags and I will do it again".
- Zelizz 5y ago
  That's possible from iOS as well.
airstrike 5y ago
I just wanted to say there are countless other potential EU antitrust charges I expected would come down the pike before I even imagined this one...
- casperc 5y ago
  App store was my expectation, but this has probably been in the works for a longer time.
amelius 5y ago
Can we get some more general laws to open up technologies that are used for the interchange of data? E.g. filesystems (FAT etc.), codecs (JPEG, MPEG), documents (DOC), fonts, ...
echelon 5y ago
Apple shouldn't be allowed to boss people in the payments space around. They shouldn't even be in payments. They're a computer device. Apple is blurring all the lines and attempting to put everything under the Apple umbrella of products. If 50% of people use an iPhone, then by Apple's logic, 50% of all commerce and transactions can be taxed by Apple at every ingress and egress. This isn't fair and Apple needs to be shut down in this effort. Apple should have nothing to do with payments, and I hope the EU rips them a new one. We need to do the same back at home.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  There's nothing wrong with Apple offering Apple Pay. The issue is that they don't allow anyone else to use the hardware in that way.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  So hardware/software companies should never be allowed to enter the software services space? Or does your claim only apply to Apple?
  - lapetitejort 5y ago
    I think the point is that hardware manufactures should not close the software door on the way out to market.
  - simion314 5y ago
    Apple should give everyone equal access, no special deals with special companies to access private APIs. If an Apple application can access an API then this API should be accessible to competitors. I am expecting some comment asking about security, the answer is Apple should have the money and talent to handle this(though with latest reveals security needs more attention). Applications can access your clipboard, your files, your photos , you tell the user that say "This Sudoku game wants access to your photos" and the user should answer but it would be even a better experience if the review process would actually work on those dudes won't just complain about links colors and other superficial shit. Imagine your reaction if "Only Microsoft can create antivirus,firewall, browser,VM software for Windows because security and think about my mom)
jaywalk 5y ago
Does Android support broad enough third-party access to NFC to allow a payment system to work?
- j16sdiz 5y ago
  It does. Not full access, but it can allow payment.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  Yes, it has APIs for ISO 14443 parts 3 and 4 which are needed for implemented payment solutions. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/advanced-nfc https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443
- cnst 5y ago
  Good question. I think Wells Fargo actually did used to have their own Android Pay alternative within their own app, but they've discontinued it, and now you have to add their cards directly into Google Pay. If you go into "Settings", "Apps & notifications", "Advanced": "Default apps", "Tap & pay", then you can select either "Google Pay" or another app that you may have. I think "Wells Fargo" app used to show up there back when they supported contactless within their app.
  - oauea 5y ago
    Most of the Dutch banks have their own payment apps that work with NFC and traditional pin machines.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      And most of them suck to the point that it's easier to just stick the NFC card in your phone case and use it that way.
      - kitsunesoba 5y ago
kaiju0 5y ago
Apple should not be required to handle 3rd party agreements with commensurate compensation. But they should also not own the market. Tough position to strike.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Once you rustle the feathers of traditional power centers (finance and law), expect them to hit back to keep the power hierarchy in place.
- nabla9 5y ago
  As an EU citizen. I think EU antitrust is fighting good fight for the people. European Union antitrust enforcement has support of may civil liberty and privacy organizations and political parties. Their main complaint is that they are not doing enough.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > EU antitrust is fighting good fight Vestager fights a popular fight, but she fights it badly. Almost everything significant she has tried to do has been blocked by courts or settled away. She’s Europe’s Eliot Spitzer.
- kryptiskt 5y ago
  Nothing gets better by installing Apple as a gatekeeper. And the EU has been pretty good against bank transfer fees and roaming charges and the like.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Nothing gets better by installing Apple as a gatekeeper Eh, privacy. A bit. The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. I also doubt contactless payment would have the adoption it has among iOS users without Apple’s branding and marketing push.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      > The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. There’s incredibly strict laws around banking privacy in NL (and most of the EU). My banks can’t even mine my transactions for any inference, except fraud. They need my approval to even categorize or track spending.
cnst 5y ago
That's some good news, hopefully a change will follow. Note that Apple Pay also has a very low limit on the number of cards that you can add, presumably because each card occupies an actual hardware slot. In the original iPhone SE, that's only 8 cards, and Apple Cash (the debit card) gets counted as one of those (unless you're remove it manually), then if you have Apple Card (the credit card), presumably it takes another slot, so you're only left with just 6 slots for any other contactless credit or debit card. How's such a low limit good for the consumer? If you only have 6 cards in total, might as well simply carry all of them in your wallet anyways; I do that already. Android Pay and Google Pay don't have such tiny, restrictive and anticompetitive limits. I have like 20 different credit cards as contactless in Google Pay without any issues, which is very convenient if you care about bonus categories; same was for Android Pay before it got rebranded as Google Pay. Plus, in Android, you can even select a third party app to be used for contactless in the "Default apps" — "Tap & pay" settings instead of Google Pay; I know Wells Fargo used to have contactless support in their own app at one point, for example, and was selectable there.
- krzyk 5y ago
  why woukd you need so many cards? I just need one debit card and thats it. I have also a credit card that is needed by car rentals. And use it only there. And I don't carry around my card because it is something I can forget. And I always carry a phone, so why have two if I need only one. Not to mention limits on pinless payments are higher in Google/Apple pay.
  - cnst 5y ago
    In the US, I've even had bank representatives during a fraud alert call tell me I always need more than one card in case one is restricted in any way. (Presumably from different banks/issuers, too, but even a single issuer is also better than nothing.) What would you do if you need to rent a car, but your bank is down, and cannot authorise the payment? The cards I have actually pay me back in rewards for having them. Why would I NOT have as many as they'll give me? Most of my 20 cards come from just 3 issuers (Chase being the one who gave me the most cards), so, it's not even like it's even an issue from the management perspective, because each card is free (or even net negative cost) to own and operate, and it costs about the same amount of time to service them by the dozen as it would take to service just one of them.
vlozko 5y ago
If you build it, they will take it away from you. That's the European market for you and compounding legal issues like this make it a difficult one to foster innovation in. This strikes me differently from the App Store issues. There Apple is dealing with 3rd parties and trying to create a playing field where they allow competitors on their platform, i.e. Apple Music and Spotify. Here Apple built their NFC chip for their own use and for their own product. If another company wants to provide NFC capability for credit cards, they can and the actual credit cards already do.
- ajford 5y ago
  I think the issue is not with supply of the chip, but Apple restricting API access to the chip on IOS devices. They're basically gatekeeping hw features, and preventing anyone else from providing the same level of features on IOS by software restriction. Could be wrong though, as I haven't followed it closely, being an Android user.
- arve0 5y ago
  > If another company wants to provide NFC capability for credit cards, they can and the actual credit cards already do. The other companies wants to provide NFC capabilities for their mobile bank/direct payment app. Like Norwegian “Vipps”, direct instant payments between any Norwegian bank.
  - DooMMasteR 5y ago
    And within the EU (EEA incl) these systems are interoperable, I can use my German bank's debit card in France, Italy, and ironically also in Switzerland. Even via NFC...
- boudin 5y ago
  You got this wrong, the title is a bit confusing though. It's about Apple not allowing other software to use the NFC and using it to force apple pay. > If you build it, they will take it away from you. That's the European market for you and compounding legal issues like this make it a difficult one to foster innovation in. Now that a really stupid statement, what does it even mean? Europe is a bad guy that goes from house to house to steal kids drawing? Europe bashing every time there's a form of regulation is really exhausting. So Europe should be a lawless place?
gumby 5y ago
I didn't quite understand the initial complaint. Access to the NFC capability maybe; though apps can already use the NFC reader and writer -- I use it with my glucose monitor -- so I'm not sure what is being mistranslated by Reuters. As far as access to the payment system itself, I also don't quite understand: if you have access to the NFC interface you can can presumably build your own payment system (e.g. google pay could in theory run on the iPhone -- is that what they mean?
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Can Google Pay be made to come up automatically whenever your iPhone is near a payment terminal? (I"m not sure if this was the EU's complaint, but it's why I've always thought Apple Pay was anti-competitive.)
  - gumby 5y ago
    I haven’t seen Apple Pay do this either, but it can be invoked from the Home Screen which others cannot be.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Really?! Apple Pay does for me on my 6S.
- boudin 5y ago
  If I understood well, it's around using NFC for payment indeed. Developers do not get access to the low-level NFC interface but a set of APIs that allows to use NFC, but in a restricted way. Apple does not seem to allow developers to use contact-less payment, making Apple Pay a monopoly on iOS, hence the antirtrust case.
- smitop 5y ago
  From 2014 (when NFC support was introduced) until 2017 (when iOS 11 was released) there was no way for 3rd party apps to use NFC on iOS at all; only apps by Apple could use NFC. There is still no technical ability for 3rd party payment apps to be able to be used from the lock screen like Apple Pay, and according to other comments Apple Pay has some special hardware access (to be able to work faster?).
sschueller 5y ago
The only reason the popular payment system in Switzerland (Twint) uses garbage bluetooth at some cash registers or qr codes (at RF terminals) is because Apple not allowing the use of their NFC (at least they did not back a few years ago). Until recently, Apple was very dominant in Switzerland and any payment solution that didn't work with Apple would be dead on arrival. Every 3rd question on the Twint forums is a request to implement payment via watch but that ain't happening as long as Apple block this and they will not enable a feature only for Android users.
- simonklitj 5y ago
  Same in Denmark with the popular mobile payment app "MobilePay".
- baybal2 5y ago
  More or less the same in China
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >they will not enable a feature only for Android users Can I ask why not? Seems a shame to leave such a large user base on the table.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    There aren't any good Android watches really. Perhaps this will change with Google and Samsung pairing up but right now as Android user you're pretty much out of luck
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      I thought parent meant payment via android phones. Is there a difference between that and watches? NFC (Google pay) should work the same across the Android ecosystem, no?
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I dunno, I bought a cheap-o Fossil watch a couple years ago on a whim, and I actually ended up using the Google Pay feature most of all. Being able to leave my phone and wallet in my backpack while I pay for coffee felt like a whole new level of real-life Disneyland.
sentinel 5y ago
Turns out making up "antitrust" cases against US companies is a great source of income for the European Union.
- sigzero 5y ago
  Seems to be so.
- franga2000 5y ago
  They're definitely treating them as an ATM, but these claims are far from "made up".
- kristofferR 5y ago
  This is a pretty clear case though, it's the same situtation in Norway. The country wide standard BankAxept, that has low fees (0.024USD per transaction), is used for almost all other card transactions, but Apple use their NFC monopoly to charge stores exorbiant VISA network fees when people use their Apple devices to pay. If the blockage of BankAxept on Apple Pay is allowed to continue it could cost the Norwegian economy hundreds of millions of dollars in just monopoly fees.
- Ginden 5y ago
  > Turns out making up "antitrust" cases against US companies is a great source of income for the European Union. That "great source of income" contributes less than 1% of EU income.
concinds 5y ago
I'm split on this. In France, you can't store a metro card on your iPhone, because Apple won't open up NFC. You can do it on Android. Yet, I don't want banks to drop Apple Pay support, and force you to use their poorly coded app for payments. Imagine having many cards, for personal and business, joint cards and foreign cards, thankfully many banks on Android end up supporting GPay, but many still force you to use their custom app and don't give you a choice. How many years did your bank take before adopting Touch ID? For me and some of you, it's measured in years. Apple shouldn't be able to block third-party NFC use, but should be entitled to force banks to make Apple Pay-compatible equivalents (when applicable) in addition to whatever custom stuff they decide to roll out.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  Then maybe switch your bank to a sane one ? Effectively voting with your wallet.
  - dhritzkiv 5y ago
    Not sure what it's like in the US (or the EU), but in Canada, all banks effectively offer the same level of customer-hostile service. Without a doubt, they'd roll their own fragmented/compromised implementation of contactless payments on iOS, if they had the choice. Not quite the same, but so many large corps in Canada don't offer Wallet integration for their relevant products (loyalty cards, points balances, etc.) They instead have their own app for these, and let me tell you: they are all garbage.
    - brodock 5y ago
      If their app they have control over your data, so it's easier to track, fingerprint you and milk it a bit more.
- cmelbye 5y ago
  Apple doesn't block third-party NFC / Apple Wallet use. They have opened it for certain use cases, including transit passes in many cities: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207958 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207958 It's incredible convenient. No need to use the fare machines -- just top up using the Apple Wallet app. Sounds like it's coming to Paris soon: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/06/apple-to-support-paris-metro-navigo-cards/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/06/apple-to-support-paris-...
DisjointedHunt 5y ago
Good! Apple has had a very weird agreement with the issuer banks and payment networks covered here by the WSJ https://archive.is/H37WU https://archive.is/H37WU (Please, support them if you can afford it, they produce wonderful journalism) Tl;dr: - Banks agreed to pay Apple 0.15% of transactions - Payment networks allowed them to select which banks and which cards would be supported. The industry standard is, if you support one card you have to support all - Somehow, the payment networks convinced Apple to agree not to compete with them by creating their own payment network in exchange for favorable terms
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
Is there any contactless payment system that isn't a complete privacy nightmare? Pretty surprised so many people even in tech are OK with yet another entity knowing your purchase history. I wish I could just make my phone emulate the contactless CC I have, that would be so mush simpler.
- shuckles 5y ago
  What are the privacy risks of Apple Pay over a contactless card? My understanding is the applet in the Secure Element operates independently of the system, and Apple does not collect data about where I transact.
  - KingMachiavelli 5y ago
    Yea I guess Apple Pay is decently private. I would assume anything available on Android is providing Google, Samsung, etc. with a lot of transaction data.
cnst 5y ago
I have both an iPhone with Apple Pay and an Android with NFC and Google Pay (previously known as Android Pay before the rebranding). Did you know that you can use Android NFC to read the full 16-digit card number of any contactless card, including the Apple Pay cards from an iOS device? The ones that are so secure you can't even see them within the interface of Apple Pay itself? And which have to be stored in a special storage on the device such that you're limited to only 8 or 12 cards, depending on the generation of the Apple Pay device? I don't think you can even do that on an iPhone, since Apple Pay is apparently the only app that's allowed to use the NFC chip.
- dwaite 5y ago
  > I don't think you can even do that on an iPhone, since Apple Pay is apparently the only app that's allowed to use the NFC chip. CoreNFC: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc
- heisenzombie 5y ago
  Yeah, although that number isn't the original card number, it's a "Device Account Number" which is unique to a specific device. I believe it's a pretty useless number to know. It can only be used in combination with a cryptographic challenge-response which verifies the particular device and matches the "Device Account Number".
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170 points by nojito 5y ago

When Animal Crossing on the Switch took off last year, I heard of some nefarious characters who would use Android phones with NFC capability to write Amiibo (Nintendo toys-to-life products) data to NFC tags, then use those tags in game. Such a thing is only possible when the manufacturer allows the user to utilize the hardware they purchased.

cptskippy 5y ago
> nefarious That's bit harsh don't you think? It's a bit like Ford selling a v6 Mustang with 4 functional cylinders and a switch on the dashboard that enables the other two but you're not allowed to flip the switch unless you send Ford $$$. Nintendo could have easily prevented copying tags by writing a signature based on the tag's MAC to the data on the tag itself. The Switch would just read the tag, generate a signature and compare it to the data read.
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  I'm being facetious, in a humorous attempt to deflect any criticism against piracy. Nintendo sold Amiibo cards in blind packs, then later discontinued them. Some of those cards are rare and sought after. I have no problem with people downloading a few hundreds bytes of data to unlock parts of software they already paid for.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Nothing to detract from your point, but I just want to reinforce in general to anyone reading this that cloning an NFC tag is very likely not piracy. An NFC code isn't a creative work that can be copyrighted, and it's a stretch to call an NFC tag a DRM system. IANAL, but I suspect that Nintendo would have a hard time arguing in a court that aftermarket Amiibo cards are doing anything illegal at all (of course, provided those cards don't violate trademark or have copyrighted graphics/characters printed on them).
    - detaro 5y ago
      I could see an argument that the card is a license key for the functionality activated by it.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    > I'm being facetious That's a dangerous game around these parts. > I have no problem with people downloading a few hundreds bytes of data to unlock parts of software they already paid for. I agree, the locked content is taking up storage space on their device and for many it's permanently inaccessible due to the scarcity of the cards.
    - lapetitejort 5y ago
      > That's a dangerous game around these parts. Subtlety is lost in text, and wasted on the technically-minded. > the locked content is taking up storage space Modders noticed unknown amiibo codes in the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild version and were able to create tags months before the amiibos were actually released. So in this case the locked content is released earlier than designed.
astraloverflow 5y ago
How is that "nefarious"? It's not like using a copy nfc tag is giving some players an unfair competitive edge (animal crossing is supposed to be laidback right?). Also, there is a limited supply of any given amiibo and so when one suddenly becomes popular (* cough * Ankha * cough *) many players get priced out.
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  "I heard of some nefarious characters" is code for "I used my Android phone to write NFC tags and I will do it again".
Zelizz 5y ago
That's possible from iOS as well.

airstrike 5y ago

I just wanted to say there are countless other potential EU antitrust charges I expected would come down the pike before I even imagined this one...

casperc 5y ago
App store was my expectation, but this has probably been in the works for a longer time.

amelius 5y ago

Can we get some more general laws to open up technologies that are used for the interchange of data? E.g. filesystems (FAT etc.), codecs (JPEG, MPEG), documents (DOC), fonts, ...

echelon 5y ago

Apple shouldn't be allowed to boss people in the payments space around. They shouldn't even be in payments. They're a computer device. Apple is blurring all the lines and attempting to put everything under the Apple umbrella of products. If 50% of people use an iPhone, then by Apple's logic, 50% of all commerce and transactions can be taxed by Apple at every ingress and egress. This isn't fair and Apple needs to be shut down in this effort. Apple should have nothing to do with payments, and I hope the EU rips them a new one. We need to do the same back at home.

jaywalk 5y ago
There's nothing wrong with Apple offering Apple Pay. The issue is that they don't allow anyone else to use the hardware in that way.
colejohnson66 5y ago
So hardware/software companies should never be allowed to enter the software services space? Or does your claim only apply to Apple?
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  I think the point is that hardware manufactures should not close the software door on the way out to market.
- simion314 5y ago
  Apple should give everyone equal access, no special deals with special companies to access private APIs. If an Apple application can access an API then this API should be accessible to competitors. I am expecting some comment asking about security, the answer is Apple should have the money and talent to handle this(though with latest reveals security needs more attention). Applications can access your clipboard, your files, your photos , you tell the user that say "This Sudoku game wants access to your photos" and the user should answer but it would be even a better experience if the review process would actually work on those dudes won't just complain about links colors and other superficial shit. Imagine your reaction if "Only Microsoft can create antivirus,firewall, browser,VM software for Windows because security and think about my mom)

jaywalk 5y ago

Does Android support broad enough third-party access to NFC to allow a payment system to work?

j16sdiz 5y ago
It does. Not full access, but it can allow payment.
cptskippy 5y ago
Yes, it has APIs for ISO 14443 parts 3 and 4 which are needed for implemented payment solutions. https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/advanced-nfc https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/nfc/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443
cnst 5y ago
Good question. I think Wells Fargo actually did used to have their own Android Pay alternative within their own app, but they've discontinued it, and now you have to add their cards directly into Google Pay. If you go into "Settings", "Apps & notifications", "Advanced": "Default apps", "Tap & pay", then you can select either "Google Pay" or another app that you may have. I think "Wells Fargo" app used to show up there back when they supported contactless within their app.
- oauea 5y ago
  Most of the Dutch banks have their own payment apps that work with NFC and traditional pin machines.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    And most of them suck to the point that it's easier to just stick the NFC card in your phone case and use it that way.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago

kaiju0 5y ago

Apple should not be required to handle 3rd party agreements with commensurate compensation. But they should also not own the market. Tough position to strike.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Once you rustle the feathers of traditional power centers (finance and law), expect them to hit back to keep the power hierarchy in place.

nabla9 5y ago
As an EU citizen. I think EU antitrust is fighting good fight for the people. European Union antitrust enforcement has support of may civil liberty and privacy organizations and political parties. Their main complaint is that they are not doing enough.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > EU antitrust is fighting good fight Vestager fights a popular fight, but she fights it badly. Almost everything significant she has tried to do has been blocked by courts or settled away. She’s Europe’s Eliot Spitzer.
kryptiskt 5y ago
Nothing gets better by installing Apple as a gatekeeper. And the EU has been pretty good against bank transfer fees and roaming charges and the like.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Nothing gets better by installing Apple as a gatekeeper Eh, privacy. A bit. The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. I also doubt contactless payment would have the adoption it has among iOS users without Apple’s branding and marketing push.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    > The reason banks want you to use their app is they can collect more data than Apple passes along. There’s incredibly strict laws around banking privacy in NL (and most of the EU). My banks can’t even mine my transactions for any inference, except fraud. They need my approval to even categorize or track spending.

cnst 5y ago

That's some good news, hopefully a change will follow. Note that Apple Pay also has a very low limit on the number of cards that you can add, presumably because each card occupies an actual hardware slot. In the original iPhone SE, that's only 8 cards, and Apple Cash (the debit card) gets counted as one of those (unless you're remove it manually), then if you have Apple Card (the credit card), presumably it takes another slot, so you're only left with just 6 slots for any other contactless credit or debit card. How's such a low limit good for the consumer? If you only have 6 cards in total, might as well simply carry all of them in your wallet anyways; I do that already. Android Pay and Google Pay don't have such tiny, restrictive and anticompetitive limits. I have like 20 different credit cards as contactless in Google Pay without any issues, which is very convenient if you care about bonus categories; same was for Android Pay before it got rebranded as Google Pay. Plus, in Android, you can even select a third party app to be used for contactless in the "Default apps" — "Tap & pay" settings instead of Google Pay; I know Wells Fargo used to have contactless support in their own app at one point, for example, and was selectable there.

krzyk 5y ago
why woukd you need so many cards? I just need one debit card and thats it. I have also a credit card that is needed by car rentals. And use it only there. And I don't carry around my card because it is something I can forget. And I always carry a phone, so why have two if I need only one. Not to mention limits on pinless payments are higher in Google/Apple pay.
- cnst 5y ago
  In the US, I've even had bank representatives during a fraud alert call tell me I always need more than one card in case one is restricted in any way. (Presumably from different banks/issuers, too, but even a single issuer is also better than nothing.) What would you do if you need to rent a car, but your bank is down, and cannot authorise the payment? The cards I have actually pay me back in rewards for having them. Why would I NOT have as many as they'll give me? Most of my 20 cards come from just 3 issuers (Chase being the one who gave me the most cards), so, it's not even like it's even an issue from the management perspective, because each card is free (or even net negative cost) to own and operate, and it costs about the same amount of time to service them by the dozen as it would take to service just one of them.

vlozko 5y ago

If you build it, they will take it away from you. That's the European market for you and compounding legal issues like this make it a difficult one to foster innovation in. This strikes me differently from the App Store issues. There Apple is dealing with 3rd parties and trying to create a playing field where they allow competitors on their platform, i.e. Apple Music and Spotify. Here Apple built their NFC chip for their own use and for their own product. If another company wants to provide NFC capability for credit cards, they can and the actual credit cards already do.

ajford 5y ago
I think the issue is not with supply of the chip, but Apple restricting API access to the chip on IOS devices. They're basically gatekeeping hw features, and preventing anyone else from providing the same level of features on IOS by software restriction. Could be wrong though, as I haven't followed it closely, being an Android user.
arve0 5y ago
> If another company wants to provide NFC capability for credit cards, they can and the actual credit cards already do. The other companies wants to provide NFC capabilities for their mobile bank/direct payment app. Like Norwegian “Vipps”, direct instant payments between any Norwegian bank.
- DooMMasteR 5y ago
  And within the EU (EEA incl) these systems are interoperable, I can use my German bank's debit card in France, Italy, and ironically also in Switzerland. Even via NFC...
boudin 5y ago
You got this wrong, the title is a bit confusing though. It's about Apple not allowing other software to use the NFC and using it to force apple pay. > If you build it, they will take it away from you. That's the European market for you and compounding legal issues like this make it a difficult one to foster innovation in. Now that a really stupid statement, what does it even mean? Europe is a bad guy that goes from house to house to steal kids drawing? Europe bashing every time there's a form of regulation is really exhausting. So Europe should be a lawless place?

gumby 5y ago

I didn't quite understand the initial complaint. Access to the NFC capability maybe; though apps can already use the NFC reader and writer -- I use it with my glucose monitor -- so I'm not sure what is being mistranslated by Reuters. As far as access to the payment system itself, I also don't quite understand: if you have access to the NFC interface you can can presumably build your own payment system (e.g. google pay could in theory run on the iPhone -- is that what they mean?

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Can Google Pay be made to come up automatically whenever your iPhone is near a payment terminal? (I"m not sure if this was the EU's complaint, but it's why I've always thought Apple Pay was anti-competitive.)
- gumby 5y ago
  I haven’t seen Apple Pay do this either, but it can be invoked from the Home Screen which others cannot be.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Really?! Apple Pay does for me on my 6S.
boudin 5y ago
If I understood well, it's around using NFC for payment indeed. Developers do not get access to the low-level NFC interface but a set of APIs that allows to use NFC, but in a restricted way. Apple does not seem to allow developers to use contact-less payment, making Apple Pay a monopoly on iOS, hence the antirtrust case.
smitop 5y ago
From 2014 (when NFC support was introduced) until 2017 (when iOS 11 was released) there was no way for 3rd party apps to use NFC on iOS at all; only apps by Apple could use NFC. There is still no technical ability for 3rd party payment apps to be able to be used from the lock screen like Apple Pay, and according to other comments Apple Pay has some special hardware access (to be able to work faster?).

sschueller 5y ago

The only reason the popular payment system in Switzerland (Twint) uses garbage bluetooth at some cash registers or qr codes (at RF terminals) is because Apple not allowing the use of their NFC (at least they did not back a few years ago). Until recently, Apple was very dominant in Switzerland and any payment solution that didn't work with Apple would be dead on arrival. Every 3rd question on the Twint forums is a request to implement payment via watch but that ain't happening as long as Apple block this and they will not enable a feature only for Android users.

simonklitj 5y ago
Same in Denmark with the popular mobile payment app "MobilePay".
baybal2 5y ago
More or less the same in China
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>they will not enable a feature only for Android users Can I ask why not? Seems a shame to leave such a large user base on the table.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  There aren't any good Android watches really. Perhaps this will change with Google and Samsung pairing up but right now as Android user you're pretty much out of luck
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    I thought parent meant payment via android phones. Is there a difference between that and watches? NFC (Google pay) should work the same across the Android ecosystem, no?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I dunno, I bought a cheap-o Fossil watch a couple years ago on a whim, and I actually ended up using the Google Pay feature most of all. Being able to leave my phone and wallet in my backpack while I pay for coffee felt like a whole new level of real-life Disneyland.

sentinel 5y ago

Turns out making up "antitrust" cases against US companies is a great source of income for the European Union.

sigzero 5y ago
Seems to be so.
franga2000 5y ago
They're definitely treating them as an ATM, but these claims are far from "made up".
kristofferR 5y ago
This is a pretty clear case though, it's the same situtation in Norway. The country wide standard BankAxept, that has low fees (0.024USD per transaction), is used for almost all other card transactions, but Apple use their NFC monopoly to charge stores exorbiant VISA network fees when people use their Apple devices to pay. If the blockage of BankAxept on Apple Pay is allowed to continue it could cost the Norwegian economy hundreds of millions of dollars in just monopoly fees.
Ginden 5y ago
> Turns out making up "antitrust" cases against US companies is a great source of income for the European Union. That "great source of income" contributes less than 1% of EU income.

concinds 5y ago

I'm split on this. In France, you can't store a metro card on your iPhone, because Apple won't open up NFC. You can do it on Android. Yet, I don't want banks to drop Apple Pay support, and force you to use their poorly coded app for payments. Imagine having many cards, for personal and business, joint cards and foreign cards, thankfully many banks on Android end up supporting GPay, but many still force you to use their custom app and don't give you a choice. How many years did your bank take before adopting Touch ID? For me and some of you, it's measured in years. Apple shouldn't be able to block third-party NFC use, but should be entitled to force banks to make Apple Pay-compatible equivalents (when applicable) in addition to whatever custom stuff they decide to roll out.

m4rtink 5y ago
Then maybe switch your bank to a sane one ? Effectively voting with your wallet.
- dhritzkiv 5y ago
  Not sure what it's like in the US (or the EU), but in Canada, all banks effectively offer the same level of customer-hostile service. Without a doubt, they'd roll their own fragmented/compromised implementation of contactless payments on iOS, if they had the choice. Not quite the same, but so many large corps in Canada don't offer Wallet integration for their relevant products (loyalty cards, points balances, etc.) They instead have their own app for these, and let me tell you: they are all garbage.
  - brodock 5y ago
    If their app they have control over your data, so it's easier to track, fingerprint you and milk it a bit more.
cmelbye 5y ago
Apple doesn't block third-party NFC / Apple Wallet use. They have opened it for certain use cases, including transit passes in many cities: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207958 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207958 It's incredible convenient. No need to use the fare machines -- just top up using the Apple Wallet app. Sounds like it's coming to Paris soon: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/06/apple-to-support-paris-metro-navigo-cards/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/06/apple-to-support-paris-...

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

Good! Apple has had a very weird agreement with the issuer banks and payment networks covered here by the WSJ https://archive.is/H37WU https://archive.is/H37WU (Please, support them if you can afford it, they produce wonderful journalism) Tl;dr: - Banks agreed to pay Apple 0.15% of transactions - Payment networks allowed them to select which banks and which cards would be supported. The industry standard is, if you support one card you have to support all - Somehow, the payment networks convinced Apple to agree not to compete with them by creating their own payment network in exchange for favorable terms

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

Is there any contactless payment system that isn't a complete privacy nightmare? Pretty surprised so many people even in tech are OK with yet another entity knowing your purchase history. I wish I could just make my phone emulate the contactless CC I have, that would be so mush simpler.

shuckles 5y ago
What are the privacy risks of Apple Pay over a contactless card? My understanding is the applet in the Secure Element operates independently of the system, and Apple does not collect data about where I transact.
- KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  Yea I guess Apple Pay is decently private. I would assume anything available on Android is providing Google, Samsung, etc. with a lot of transaction data.

cnst 5y ago

I have both an iPhone with Apple Pay and an Android with NFC and Google Pay (previously known as Android Pay before the rebranding). Did you know that you can use Android NFC to read the full 16-digit card number of any contactless card, including the Apple Pay cards from an iOS device? The ones that are so secure you can't even see them within the interface of Apple Pay itself? And which have to be stored in a special storage on the device such that you're limited to only 8 or 12 cards, depending on the generation of the Apple Pay device? I don't think you can even do that on an iPhone, since Apple Pay is apparently the only app that's allowed to use the NFC chip.

dwaite 5y ago
> I don't think you can even do that on an iPhone, since Apple Pay is apparently the only app that's allowed to use the NFC chip. CoreNFC: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc
heisenzombie 5y ago
Yeah, although that number isn't the original card number, it's a "Device Account Number" which is unique to a specific device. I believe it's a pretty useless number to know. It can only be used in combination with a cryptographic challenge-response which verifies the particular device and matches the "Device Account Number".

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