Australian Banks Challenge Apple Over Mobile Payment App Restrictions

[kdarling]

What's the fraud rate percentage with chip-enabled, NO pin required, contactless pay credit and debit cards with a merchant receipt that only shows the last 4-digits of the card, huh?

Contactless fraud in long time chip & PIN countries such as the UK costs the banks about 0.007%... which is twenty times less than the 0.15% cut that Apple gets in the US. So for those banks, there's no economic reason to support Apple Pay at a high fee. Paying for the relatively little amount of fraud is much cheaper.

Moreover some countries cap bank fees at something like 0.22%, which leaves almost no profit if they must give a huge chunk to Apple.

Negotiating a lower rate is what has delayed its adoption outside the US, and even caused banks to band together.

 

[Wanted797]

How would this even work if Apple doesn't let you change defaults? Apple Pay would still be triggered from the lock screen. And if I need to manually unlock my phone and open said app, that kinda defeats the purpose of said app to begin with.

Great point! These banks seem to think they want use to choose but are to dumb to realised that the usage of their apps is going to be a far inferior experience than Apple Pay. OR the more likely scenario is that they do know this, don't care about their customers and will do the same 'monopoly' tactics and not support Apple Pay because they have their own apps.

 

[benji888]

I agree with you, but this isn't really a privacy issue. Your bank already has access to all your personal information, and knows exactly where you're spending your money - whether you use Apple Pay or not!

Ok, I left out the part where, when you use Apple Pay and the place of POS (Point Of Sale) gets hacked, your card info. is not stolen, but a tokenized transaction that cannot be re-used...and Touch ID is required, which is also secure in your iPhone.

 

[AsherN]

It'd mean iPhone users could finally use their phones for payment instead of fruitlessly waiting for apple to get off their lazy ass and release apple pay in ${Country}.

You do realize that it's up to the banks to negotiate with Apple for fees, and up to the banks to modify their back-end, right? It's not just Apple deciding to implement or not.