One of the steps Apple took in Europe to avoid further antitrust investigations was to make its NFC chips open to third parties. Apple did this with the release of iOS 17.4. This is something that isn’t available in any other country in the world. Now regulators could approve Apple’s plan and authorize this feature across the EU. Tap-to-Pay is currently only available in The United States, France, Taiwan, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Brazil, and Ukraine.
According to a Reuters report, the European Commission could approve it next month. This would mean that banks and other apps could take advantage of the iPhone’s NFC chip to let users make and receive payments. There would be no need to use Apple Pay. It doesn’t seem Apple would like it, as the company would miss out on the commission every time users use Apple Pay.
The Commission’s line of argument is that not allowing other payment apps to use the iphone NFC chip is anti-competitive. In this case, Apple has preferred to open it to third parties and thus avoid yet another legal battle in Europe. At first glance this looks good for the user, but we’ll have to see how safe this system is.
It doesn’t look like we’ll have to wait long to find out when and how it’ll work. We’ll also have to see if banks use this opportunity to move away from Apple Pay and manage payments from their own apps. This news certainly leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but it won’t be long before we’ll be able to clarify them.