Apple Pay and iPhone NFC restrictions can get Apple fined by the European Commission

Antitrust investigations from the European Commission on tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Facebook have been going strong in the past couple of years, and tech giants have already faced fines from the EC on some dubbed 'anticompetitive' behaviors. Now, 9to5Mac reports Apple is about to get in trouble with the EC, this time for Apple pay and the iPhone NFC chip.

Fines for anticompetitive behavior with Apple Pay and NFC against Apple are being finalized

The investigation has been going on since last year when the EC antitrust regulators have focused on Apple Pay and the iPhone's NFC chip that makes contactless payments possible and began to scrutinize the practice. What the commission started investigating, in the beginning, was whether Apple unfairly locked out other contactless payment services by restricting the use of the NFC chip inside iPhones.


The EU competition enforcer is currently drafting a statement of objections that will express the concerns. The document is expected to be sent to Apple next year.

Apple has been opening up access to the NFC chip in iPhones in recent years; however, third-party contactless payment systems have had a hard time in comparison to Apple Pay integration with iOS, so this could have been an issue for antitrust regulators. The way that the NFC chip in an iPhone works seems to give an advantage to Apple Pay which antitrust regulators do not like. For example, when an iPhone comes near to an NFC reader, the Wallet and Apple Pay interface is immediately automatically shown, something third-party systems cannot do on the iPhone.

Apple has breached anti-competitive laws in the EU before

Earlier this year, the European Commission concluded in another investigation (this one is a preliminary conclusion at the moment, not a final decision, so keep that in mind) that Apple is indeed in breach of anti-competitive laws. More precisely, the investigation here was about Apple Music and music streaming services, and whether Apple was favoring its own solution on iPhones and thus making it harder for third-party music streaming services to compete.

This anti-competitive behavior was related to the high commission fees that Apple imposed on third-party apps in the App Store and that the company does not allow app developers to tell users there are other payment methods... sounds familiar? Maybe yes, as this is the same complaint game maker Epic Games had against Apple and why the popular Fortnite game is no longer to be found on the App Store, for more than a year now.

The aforementioned preliminary conclusion does not impose any fines or regulations yet, as it is not final. The next step is for the commission to review the case with Apple.

In this case, after the period of reviewing it with Apple, the commission will decide whether to proceed with formal charges. If found in breach of competition law, the EC can force Apple to change the rules of the App Store or pay a fine for past offenses, which can go up to 10% of annual revenue.

It is not only Apple that the EC is investigating for breaching competitive laws. Under investigation are also other tech giants such as Google, and even Amazon (for anti-competitiveness in the smart home market). The EC is also investigating the voice assistants on devices from Apple, Google, and Amazon, for the same issues.