The Apple Pay soap opera in Australia has all the earmarks of becoming an annoying headache that the company does not seem to be able to get rid of, and in the end it will be the users who are harmed since Apple could choose to throw in the towel And stop trying for the umpteenth time to get Australian banks to adopt Apple Pay instead of blocking it over and over again. Since it arrived in Australia from the hand of American Express, all the country's banks have opposed sharing the commissions they charge to businesses with Apple, Apple's only source of income offering this technology.
But it is not the only problem, which faces the banks, since these they want Apple to release access to the iPhone's NFC chip so that they can offer their own applications without having to go through Apple technology, and therefore, pay the commission they require. But Apple flatly refuses, stating that it could put user data at risk. That is, the NFC chip will only and exclusively be used for Apple Pay, period. No other company will be able to access it in the future.
Banks argue that this practice violates free competition, but since the company is the one that manufactures the device and software necessary to make it functional, it is within its right to do whatever it wants with it, as a judge stated a few weeks ago when the banks denounced Apple for these practices that they called anti-competitive. In a public and notorious way Australia has been the only country that is causing problems in this regard, although in Spain, the main banks, except Santander, it seems that they do not plan to offer the possibility of paying with Apple Pay, so as not to have to share the income they get from the cards.
