The European Union (EU) Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager Monday accused Apple of restricting competition in the iOS mobile wallets market due to its exclusivity toward Apple Pay.
Vestager announced:
Mobile payments play a rapidly growing role in our digital economy. It is important for the integration of European Payments markets that consumers benefit from a competitive and innovative payments landscape. We have indications that Apple restricted third-party access to key technology necessary to develop rival mobile wallet solutions on Apple’s devices. In our Statement of Objections, we preliminarily found that Apple may have restricted competition, to the benefit of its own solution Apple Pay. If confirmed, such conduct would be illegal under our competition rules.
The Commission disagreed with Apple’s decision “to prevent mobile wallets app developers, from accessing the necessary hardware and software (‘NFC input’) on its devices,” which in turn benefits Apple’s own Apple Pay. Apple does not make Apple Pay available to mobile wallets developed by third-party app developers.
The Commission noted, “Apple’s dominant position in the market for mobile wallets on its operating system iOS, restricts competition, by reserving access to NFC technology to Apple Pay.” Therefore, Apple’s “conduct would infringe Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’) that prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position.” Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) “prohibits the abuse of a dominant position” such as the Commission believes Apple to possess.
A Statement of Objections is a step in the process of investigating suspected violations and does not prejudge the outcome of such an investigation. There is no legal deadline for completing an antitrust investigation.
