So you want Apple to build and provide a solution for free (and put their security reputation on the line for a third party), or else they are "greedy." Okay then.
Apple did not build the contactless NFC solution. That was done by others. See below. Their primary invention was to come up with the brilliant idea of preventing us from accessing the EMV applets to use our own credit cards, unless banks paid Apple a fee.
I want Apple Pay, and I don't want the banks accessing the NFC. They'd use their lame applications, and it wouldn't be tied into the OS like Apple Pay is.
On the contrary, their apps would be EXACTLY like Apple Pay contactless is now.
- Apple does not handle the tokenization.
- Apple did not write the contactless EMV payment code.
- Apple's servers do NOTHING during a contactless payment.
All that is done by the MC/Visa/AMEX/Discover payment applets stored in the Secure Element, which were written and owned by the credit card schemes. NOT APPLE.
Apple's part in a contactless payment is to provide the app that provides the UI that lets the user set the default payment card and authenticates the user with Touch Id.
A replacement app can easily do EXACTLY the same thing. That's what NFC is all about.
I used to sell card merchant services to retailers. It is common to negotiate the card service fee so it is entirely normal for Apple to use that lever to cover the costs of ApplePay.
The fees you're talking about are for providing an actual service during a transaction, such as providing the network, transferring funds, providing tokenization services.
Apple's servers do absolutely nothing during a contactless transaction. The CC applets, local acquirer service companies, credit card companies and the banks do it all.
The only reason Apple gets a contactless fee, is because they won't let anyone else register to use the NFC credit card applets in the first place, without paying Apple.
Yeah, right, having to unlock and then search for that one app for each credit card I have. What an improvement to Apple Pay where one app has it all in the lock screen.
With normal NFC, any app can be set to be woken when the appropriate terminal is close by (payment, transportation, whatever).
Thus any app could register to act exactly like the Apple Pay app does.
Apple takes lower fees than the credit card company using signature and even chip and pin. The credit card fees are high because they have to take the fraud into account. Apple Pay is safer so this fee is lower, and the credit card companies can charge less to the bank. So the banks don't feel any extra fees, depending on the terms they may even pay less.
In countries like the UK where EMV has been around for a long time, the cost of contactless payment fraud runs about twenty times LESS than the cost of Apple's fee.
I have no idea why you think opening access of NFC to any party, particularly banks, is a good idea. Perhaps you should be asking why the banks are so determined in wanting this information? Like many people, I don't want banks to have access to this information, particularly as they are so keen to have it.
This post makes no sense.
The banks
already get all the
same purchase information, since they are the purchase approvers.
Heck, that's partly why banks were willing to pay Apple... to continue getting this information. Unlike with, say, the original Google Wallet which anonymized our purchase info from the banks.
You must be trolling to imply a BANK has anything but its financial self-interests in mind.
Of course they do. Moreover, it helps their customers as well, because anything that cuts into their fees means lower award programs for us.
Not to mention that's Apple's fees are a burden on smaller profit institutions such as credit unions.
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TL;DR - so much nonsense has been posted. With normal open NFC, apps can register to start automatically just like the Apple Pay GUI does. And that's all Apple Pay is with contactless payments, a GUI. The real work is done by the NFC applets and all the banking backend systems. Apple invented none of that, and does nothing during a contactless purchase to earn any transaction service fees. If Apple had never been involved, and had originally opened NFC, we'd have had banking apps... and apps like say, an Oyster transportation card... in nearly every country of the world by now.
All this said, where Apple could legitimately earn a fee, is with NON-contactless purchases where their servers ARE involved due to in-app purchasing APIs. However, even that could be done by a bank's app / custom applets if allowed.