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Apple Pay Faces Swiss Antitrust Investigation Over NFC Access
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It's not a lawsuit.
...yet. Given how we've seen time and again how is failing to effectively comply with antitrust regulation.
Keeping with your analogy, Apple have made it their (App Store/Services) business to take away slices from everyone else's pies:
- Software applications had been able to make use of hardware functionality on the devices their customers had paid for for decades ...until Apple decided to gatekeepers it and charges commissions on it.
- Developers had been able to write software applications for general purpose computing platforms, sell and distribute them to customers without being taxed a high percentage of revenue by an OS developer ...until Apple decided to gatekeepers the functionality to distribute and install apps on one of the most popular such computing platform.
- Advertising and selling a service or digital item within an application that the customer already downloaded and installed: Possible for decades ...until Apple decided to gatekeep the functionality and charge commissions.
When you conduct your business like a racketeering operation, expect to be challenged and fought back. And don't be surprised if, occasionally, that gets ugly. Or the feds, governments and courts of law are coming down on you.
They're reaping what they sowed.
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And the merchants charge "You" this fee. A lot of work and experiments in Australia to bring down these fees. Customers pay these fees, whether the merchant increases the prices of all transactions to cover them. Or whe the merchant publishes and reclaims the exact merchant fee on Apple Pay transactions from customers (merchants were encouraged by the government in Australia to publish the exact fee broken down by card type or Apple Pay - and reclaim that amount from the customer instead of inflating all prices for other payment methods like cash or bank transfer). Recovering a greater cost than was actually incurred by the merchant for fees was made illegal.
Apple is entitled to nickel and dime and you are entitled to use android. Apple is ventilator a walled garden and you are entitled to use android if you dislike that.
In my opinion while Apple holds a minority share of iOS, governments are afraid of its influence. But by their customers they have done right.
I believe consumers - and other businesses alike - deserve more choice.
And Apple is free to charge what they want within the limits of antitrust law/regulation.
We need more laws around that curtail the market and pricing power of such companies - and strict enforcement of them.
The choice to me is choose the platform you want taking all into consideration.
Sure, like banks have fees that are regulated by law.
We need less and let the market decide.
Google/android doesn't restrict NFC access like Apple (which is of course changing as well)
Of course merchants are free to price their goods and services to cover all operational costs. I do not consider that as the merchant "chargi[e] [you] this fee" . The point was, ApplePay results in no fees to the user, nor does it directly result in increased pricing for good from the merchant. If the transaction fee is 1% the merchant charges me $10 and pays the bank $0.10. The merchant has already accounted for the fee (operational cost) in their pricing. The fact that the bank pays Apple $$0.015 of of that transaction is irrelevant. Irrelevant to me. Irrelevant to the merchant.
The only way that consumers are being charged fees is when the merchants add a surcharge to the bill if the bill is paid with a credit card. That used to go against the agreements between banks and merchants, but it has been greatly relaxed. I've seen cases where the surcharge is greater than the transaction fee - merchants have just used the complaint of fees to add another income stream. (Adminittedly, this may be US-only. I have not travelled internationally since the surcharges became a common occurrence here so I don't have direct knowledge outside of the US. But, US or not, the point holds. ApplePay does not cost me money in and of itself.
edit: corrected the decimal.
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OK. And that changes my point how? The fact that some reagions allow higher fees than others does not change anything. Apple gets a much smaller cut in the EU due to the lower transaction fees.
We can argue whether any fees are due or not. Banks would like none. Merchants shouldn't care as there is no difference in their payment structures. I only care if a merchant is being duplicitous and using the fact that I used aApplePay to charge me more for my purchase when there was no added cost to them to cover.