A parliamentary committee in Germany on Wednesday passed an amendment to an anti-money laundering law that would force Apple to open up the NFC chip in iPhones to competing mobile payment providers, according to Reuters. The report claims the law is set to come into effect early next year.
The new legislation is supposed to open the infrastructure of “operators of electronic money to offer access to rivals for a reasonable fee.” To put things in perspective, that’s also how Google’s model works: different mobile payment services like Samsung Pay can compete with Google Pay on phones that have NFC chips.
Naturally, Apple responded negatively to the news. A spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “surprised at how suddenly this legislation was introduced. We fear that the draft of the law could be harmful to user friendliness, data protection and the security of financial information.”
According to Zeit Online, the publication that first spotted the draft, US embassy officials have tried to intervene in the decision along with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who asked for the amendment to be withdrawn.
Apple might be worried about the fact that once a EU country passes such legislation, other countries from the bloc could quickly follow suit. However, the more pressing problem is that Margrethe Vestager, who is now in charge of digital policy in the region, is interested in taking a closer look at Apple Pay from an antitrust perspective.
Vestager told Bloomberg last month that “convenience can come with a very big price if it shuts down competition, because then eventually you may have to pay a higher price either in terms of money or fees or in terms of data.” She’s convinced that “payment systems is an obvious place where it is beneficial for consumers that different payment systems can work together.”
Earlier this month, the European Union’s competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager acknowledged that her department has received “many concerns” over Apple Pay and potential anticompetitive issues. Australia’s big banks have also sought open access to the NFC chip on the iPhone in recent years.
