Launched in 2014, Apple Pay has begun to grow at an exponential rate. The payment service by Apple only works on the devices made by the company. The goal with Apple Pay is to offer a seamless payment experience using fingerprint or facial recognition as authorization methods.
According to Apple Insider, Apple Pay has grown heavily since the beginning of the global coronavirus pandemic. Past few months and years as well, have been all about regulators taking a hard look at big tech companies. It appears that all of regulators’ eyes are on Apple again for the way in which it runs Apple Pay.
Apple users are reportedly “motivated” to use Apple’s own methods such as Apple Card or Apple Pay Cash. The company launched its own credit card by the name of “Apple Card” in partnership with Goldman Sachs as its banking partner while Mastercard took over the payment network.
According to Apple Insider, Apple “minimizes” other payment mechanisms and makes it much easier to use Apple’s own payment methods over third-party services. The iPhone ships with Apple’s own Wallet app and it cannot be deleted from the device. The other major controversy is that Apple does not allow third-party payment services to use the NFC technologies on the iPhone while its own Apple Pay Wallet app can use NFC.
When a user is about to make a payment at a terminal by bringing the iPhone or an Apple Watch closer, the Wallet app is the one to pop-up. The iPhone or Apple Watch settings cannot be tweaked to have a different payment service open up instead of Apple’s Wallet app. Apple has hard coded to have only its own Wallet open when users are about to make payments using NFC.
The European Union (EU) started an investigation into Apple Pay last year.
