Apple hit with EU antitrust charge over its payment technology | Hacker News Reader

Apple hit with EU antitrust charge over its payment technology

reuters.com

124 pointsnojito170 comments

I wish the US would go after companies like this. Instead the US is ran for the companies.

All successful countries to a large extent are run for the companies, but the border between public, private and regulated/un-regulated is different.

And that’s why all tech companies are in the US, employ people there and generate wealth there.

Except most were also started by Americans or people who had already moved to America for other reasons.

Apple isn’t an EU company so they get regulated hard.

Volkswagen was pumping tons of NOx into the air in EU cities for years and regulators there rolled over and looked the other way the whole time. But in the US they got regulated hard.

And that's why it's good to have competition and good to have multiple powers regulating each other.

Yes I think the same thing. “Regulatory competition”? Maybe the only truly effective antidote to regulatory capture.

The market tends towards monopolies. That is why you have the FTC, SEC, etc. So regulatory competition would lead to regulatory monopoly, unless you introduce meta regulators and the cycle begins anew.

It's a popular opinion on HN that the EU picks on American companies but to offer an alternative theory: American companies are more often subject to EU penalties because they more frequently/severely break EU law.

American companies more frequently break EU law because they're used to the US regulatory environment, which is so loose that in many areas it may as well not exist. In the rare situations where a regulator does start to speak up, it's easily manipulated through lobbying (see FCC common carrier regulations as an example).

Part of it is also cultural/economic. American companies are aggressive and come to Europe when they've already amassed a large war chest from their business success in the US, so they're willing to risk a fight with European regulators because they know they'll be able to fund it. European companies are more conservative, so less willing to clash with regulators, and they have to survive in Europe from their inception, so may not be able to afford a large legal battle.

A lot more of this sort of favoritism goes on behind the scenes in Europe.

I have personally seen RFPs that "had to" go to French vendors, etc., etc.

It's common in most countries for publically funded things like defence or government contracts to have a minimum percentage of home grown development/manufacturing in the tender.

You see that everywhere, even in the US. "American made" is often seen as a badge of honour but it requires excluding European suppliers.

Even aside from the marketing label, there are practicalities achieved by choosing a domestic business partner, like simplification of legal issues.

"American companies more frequently break EU law because they're used to the US regulatory environment, which is so loose that in many areas it may as well not exist."

There's little doubt that this is true. Given US history from independence onward, the question is why does the US environment so often favor corporate rights and protection for corporations over that of freedoms and interests of individuals. It seems to me that the reality of US governance (its emphasis) is the reverse of what one would expect.

The only conclusion I can come to is that citizens in the US democracy have effectively considerably lower representation than do corporations through some systemic problem with their democracy. That's to say the reality is not one vote per person but effectively each citizen's vote is worth much less than that.

Why is it thus?

> Volkswagen was pumping tons of NOx into the air in EU cities for years and regulators there rolled over

Are we still pretending like Volkswagen was the only manufacturer breaking/'gaming' the rules on pollution? Or that Japanese and American[1] car-makers were not doing the same? Well, they were.

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vw-just-the-latest-in-long-hist...

Are we still pretending like

Are you actually pretending that any of these cases compares to the scope and the depth of Volkswagen's treachery and lawbreaking with "clean diesel"?

It's because US companies are used to shitting so far outside of the can that sometimes you have to reposition them over the toilet.

> [article] evidence on our file indicates that Apple's conduct cannot be justified by security concerns

The biggest thing is that EU fact checks the bullshit that these companies spew. The US simply has, let's call it "successfully lobbied," senators listen to "expert witness" statements.

Oh, definitely. They did a great job fact checking Volkswagen: https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/peter-mock-vom-icct-uebe...

I really don't understand how Americophobia can be so disproportionate among HN crowd. Does anyone honestly think politicians in a specific part of the world are not corrupt?

The sentiment on HN toward any given country depends on which country's people is currently awake. At the time the article was posted, and currently still, it's probably more Europeans than Americans.

> Does anyone honestly think politicians in a specific part of the world are not corrupt?

Just because American democracy is failing, it does not mean democracy is failing everywhere.

Is Hungary's corruption a result of "American democracy failing" or is that homegrown?

Democracy is only "failing" when the people vote in politicians that create barriers for certain investment bankers.

To address the strawman:

* The mix of corrupt decisions to honest decisions is probably very different between USA and EU.

* USA legally endorses bribes[1].

[1]: https://ballotpedia.org/Super_PAC

was there ever a case of anti-trust law discouraging competition / innovation ? on the other side monopolies are known to do that.

I personally think this is probably the right decision, however I hope banks still offer both Apple Pay and their own option. Being able to switch cards from within the wallet app is a much better experience than having to open another banking app (and potentially having to sign in to that app), or having to change the default system payments app to use the card I want.

Although I live in the UK so this probably won't affect me.

Can you explain why you prefer paying with your phone rather than with physical cards? This seems to just have downsides to me (need to have phone charged, have to fiddle around to start payment app etc) when you can just wave a plastic card in front of a terminal and be done with it.

Only potential upside I can think of would be that you don't need to bring a wallet, but you'd still need that for ID, driver's license etc. anyways.

On Android you just unlock your phone and hold it up to the terminal. No need to start an app first.

Secondly, I prefer paying with my phone for the simple reason that I always bring my phone anyway, so now I could leave my cards at home if I wanted to.

> have to fiddle aroudn to start payment app

This isn't really a thing with Apple Pay. You double tap the power button as you grab your phone, then Apple Pay is active (pending face id or unlock via watch), it's a very smooth process.

On top of that, in my experience, tap to pay (via card or phone) is much quicker to process than swiping or inserting chip.

But when shopping from home the default on a lot of sites is Apple Pay which is ridiculously easy compared to most other options. The comparison to in store shopping isn’t the same (though Apple Pay is still relatively easy where i hold the phone up to the terminal and it works).

The cool part is paying w/ your watch, and you don't really need to start any app - it's NFC anyways. Yet, I don't have the payments with phone/watch enabled.

Convenience, plain and simple. I've never once been concerned about battery life on my phone. It's VERY rare for me to ever be below 50% at any point in the day, even on a long day where I've been mostly on cellular. But the iPhone now has a feature that even if your battery is "dead", some cards will still be available for use (it's a very specific feature/setting).

Same applies with my watch, which has the same cards available. It's nice if I run to a convenience mart after a run, where I often don't carry my phone or wallet. Just tap my watch at the terminal, and off I go!

I carry -- and regularly use -- around 5-6 cards that all have specific uses. Having a digital wallet to manage these is awesome. My physical wallet, I carry only three cards: my ID, debit card and my health insurance card.

I hold the phone more often than my wallet or physical card. It takes less time to use it for payment than pulling the card out of my wallet in my pocket, if I carry it in the first place.

In many US states, and European countries, driver's license is now also offered digitally. So it's not true that you always need a physicial driver's license.

I find it very conveniet to only have to carry my phone with me. It's also (I would argue) more secure, since even if someone was to steal my phone, they wouldn't be able to use the credit cards or stored driver's license without my face or fingerprint.

you are trading absolute surveillance for daily convenience, right?

Going for a run. Why carry my wallet?

Passing through a turnstile at a station, can pay with my watch without pulling out either my phone or wallet.

Tons of situations like those

Besides the practicality mentioned by the sibling commenters, there's also the limits part. Google/Apple Pay don't suffer from the low limits physical cards have for contactless payments ( it was 20 euros pre-pandemic here, now it's 50 or 100). Your phone having biometric auth is considered enough by banks to not have limits.

This and the laundry list of reviews from Europe should make an interesting WWDC. However, I am growing concern in the security risk these “anticompetitive” statements are. While I'd like idea of a more open iPhone, I also understand the technical aptitude of majority of their customers. This feels like a potential opening for more exploits where the iCloud leak could look like child’s play.

To be fair both points of view are valid and easy to agree upon. Apple makes choices for its customers, though, when the EU government makes choices for its citizen. And even if the EU might be wrong, Apple must comply.

Apple couldn't open the NFC payment API & technologies first to make sure the Apple Pay technology image wasn't tarnished by poor and less secure competitive payment solutions on iOS.

But now, they have no excuses to allow competition. Especially if they cannot use the Apple Pay trademarks.

I think the EU had chip and tap to pay before apple. So the over there Apple looks like it implemented a solution and then blocked competitors from using the platform with already established payment terminals. In the US, the optics are very different because Google, Samsung and others came way after apple took the reigns and drove adoption of tap to pay.

Google actually got there prior to Apple in the US with Wallet, but then played the typical google branding mess and got caught up in that insane carrier game that went on (can you believe we had a payment app called ISIS?!) so they lost any ground there lol.

>And even if the EU might be wrong, Apple must comply.

Well no. If they're "wrong" then they'll lose the case when it heads to the General Court and/or the ECJ.

I meant "wrong" in a moral or philosophical point of view, not in the illegal meaning.

Are you suggesting apple users are stupid or easy to fool?

Also how does increasing payment options lead to security risk? The android ecosystem is fine with multiple payment methods.

All users are, at some point, stupid and easy to fool. Proof of this is as simple as looking at the recent spat of “I’m a security expert and I got scammed” headlines.

Googler, opinions are my own. I work on payments.

Google does not allow apps within the app store to present their own payment method, except for Spotify which is part of some trial right now.

I could definitely see shady apps within the stores collecting payment info from users that then use those cards as if they were still on. If people get used of apps collecting payment information on all different kinds of UX, they will likely be more willing to type in their information into any app, leading to a higher chance of stolen payment information.

I think you're misunderstanding the EU's problem with Apple Pay, because like Google, Apple's branding around this is stupid.

The EU has a problem with Apple forcing everyone who wants to make contactless payments over NFC to use Apple Pay by not giving any other app access to the required NFC APIs, unlike Android which does allow alternatives to Google Pay. This has nothing to do with the "pay online with Google/Apple Pay" or "manage your Android/iOS app subscriptions with Google/Apple Pay", besides the fact that the service is named the same and uses the same underlying bank card data you give it.

> Google does not allow apps within the app store to present their own payment method

Does this apply to NFC as well? On Android, if an app wants to use NFC for payment that is not processed through Google Pay, can it exist on the Google Play store?

If I'm understanding you correctly, yes, there are alternative NFC payment apps to Google Pay, like Samsung Pay and various bank-specific apps. My main traditional bank doesn't support Google or Apple Pay, and you need to pass through an app of theirs for NFC payments, and you can even set it as the default app for NFC payments ( that's the extent to which Google allow alternative NFC payment apps).

To add a late caveat to my previous statement. There are cases around physical goods where Google does not take a cut for enough purchases ( and allows these companies to use their own payment processors). This applies to things like Uber and Lyft, and buying things through the Amazon app that gets shipped to.

s/apple //g; and by and large, the answer is yes.

But it even happens to the tech-literate.

What kind of security issues are you thinking about? Because Android has had a freely accessible NFC chip (+ secure element) since forever, and I can't think of one example where something bad happened.

Also, Google Pay co-exists on Android next to other companies' apps. So you don't have to stop using Apple Pay if you don't want to.

>Also, Google Pay co-exists on Android next to other companies' apps. So you don't have to stop using Apple Pay if you don't want to.

My bank didn't have any mobile payments on iOS for the longest time because they wanted to do payments via their own app, so it was only available on Android devices. Eventually, they caved in and added Apple Pay, since there was no other way forwards on iOS. Looks like they've also added Google Pay now.

While I technically like the idea of opening the NFC to third parties, I'm also worried that this will incentivise banks to not use a service with a good UX like Apple Pay.

This could be the case. But then Apple would simply have to offer better terms to lure in customers (banks). Just like any other company offering a paid service. Having a good UX is part of that.

Nowadays they can basically charge whatever they want since they've eliminated all competition through software restrictions in iOS.

The better terms to lure banks all involve worse terms for the actual end user, which is the entire problem here. I'd much rather have Apple force all companies into a user/privacy-friendly policy than a race to the bottom where each company exfiltrates as much transaction data as possible by using their own apps for NFC payments.

I guess one solution would be to force Apple to open up the NFC chip, and force banks into providing companies like Apple and Google a way to do payments on their devices, and then have them duke it out on who can get the most consumers.

As opposed to just Apple having that information doing God Knows What? They say they “care about privacy” but I have good reason to think they actually don’t (based on convos with some data scientists that worked there).

Hmmm I might be the odd one out but I really don’t want apple to be opening up payment options and nfc for payment to anyone on iPhone/watch.

Why?

Why are you opposed to consumer choice?

Why do you feel it's fair that once you purchase something form Apple, you must go through Apple to make all future purchases?

With the same validity I can ask why are you against security and ease of use?

Ppl buy Apple products and KNOW AND ACCEPT the limitations when making that purchase.

There are alternatives- get an android phone, there are plenty of brands there.

I buy Apple products ESPECIALLY for the locked down OS.

Why are you against my consumer choice? If any alternative store, payment, in app purchase is introduced - I’m deprived of my choice. And now there isn’t a closed OS I can use.

There are actual reasons I want that OS. My parents had android devices and they got scammed at least once a month to share their details and their cards got stolen as they would download apps and those app would “guide” them how install apps from untrusted sources while promising “enabling free bank transactions access”. After moving to iOS none of that happened. I get the odd subscription I need to cancel but I do that from the phone - not another system.

Why couldn't this be solved by Apple simply adding a feature that allows you to lock the installation sources behind a PIN? We've had these type of restrictions for other subsystems, so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible here? (Modulo security vulnerabilities, but those exist for the current iOS ecosystem as well).

Example. I could set my parents' device up so they can only install from curated stores (Let's say App Store & Epic Games store, if they were inclined to play games). Now I don't have to worry about them being scammed into sideloading shady apps, they don't have the PIN; and I get all my freedom to install whatever I want.

I'd be honestly happy to hear an argument for why this wouldn't work, cause I haven't been able to work it out.

edit: In a world where apple is mandated to provide sideloading access, it's even in their interest to provide such a feature. It allows them to hold up their "we're security focused" claim, while at the same time potentially increasing revenue (in my example, my parents are still vendor-locked, just by me, their "digital guardian").

That is true. I’m okay with that approach but if it works for everything.

Like for example in-app purchases as well. I don’t want to use the subscription service of every app out there. I want to use the Apple subscription model where I keep everything on the App Store.

If apps are mandated to use the Apple APIs for payments but they can have other means of payment and I can block those from showing using the above PIN functionality- I’m okay.

And it’s again a win-win scenario. Well maybe not developers who most likely will see that ppl trust the Apple system and not their 3rd party payment methods even if they are cheaper.

Basically what I argue for is that I should have a choice to have my phone locked up like it currently is and App Store publishers should not be the ppl who tell me how to use my device. That is all I want and have against side loading and alternatives.

I think your idea could work. :)

Since buying my mum an iPhone I haven’t had to help her with it once. It just works.

If you subscribe on an app for a monthly subscription. If you delete the app it asks if you want to keep the subscription or cancel it. Without the apple ecosystem in place this would silently keep charging her monthly.

She can buy stuff without entering cc details or using random payment apps and not get scammed.

Everyone seems to want the sex appeal of apple products but with the freedom of android. Why not just skin android and use an android phone and leave iOS as is.

> Since buying my mum an iPhone I haven’t had to help her with it once. It just works.

I can tell you that I had a wildly different experience in that respect. A lot of stuff is nonintuitive and works in quirky ways, with occasional buggy behavior. (Not Apple Pay specifically, she doesn’t use that.)

Late but one thing to add is that my parents can now just call apple or chat with them and not call me for - I think my email is not working as I haven't received anything in the last hour.

When I got my first iPhone, such “limitations” weren’t really an issue. As a 30’s something dev, I understand them much more deeply than I did when I made the initial purchase. I now have a number of apps that I use on a daily basis, some of which I’ve paid 100’s of dollars to acquire over the years.

Thus simply “getting Android,” is quite an expensive prospect and we haven’t even talked about the social implications.

Playing devil’s advocate, but consumer choice isn’t some silver bullet to magic up better outcomes. Corporations can hire armies of risk analysts to understand the product they are selling better than you ever can as a consumer, so there’s almost always an information asymmetry that they can exploit. Good quality regulation would exist to redress that balance, even though it would reduce the number of potential choices. All the choices that it would prevent were never good faith options.

Then simply don't use the alternatives. That's your choice.

Until the alternatives pull themselves out of the centralized system. That’s also their _choice._

Consumers switch banks all the time…

Doesn’t make it any less of a shit user experience. Last time I switched banks they lost my initial deposit - more than half of my cash - and my balance was -$deposit. Took hours of phone calls and (multiple!) branch visits to resolve because the sending bank wouldn’t pick up the phone.

One of my most stressful experiences, financially.

That sounds like an outlier experience. I’ve used dozens of banks over my lifetime and never had a bad experience except this one time the teller accidentally added a few dozen zeros to a check I deposited.

It may be an outlier, but consumers are especially vulnerable to issues like this while switching banks. One small hiccup can make you lose a very large % of your cash on hand, since usually you aren't working with >= 50% of your funds on a daily basis.

So if I read this correctly they're finally getting fined for closing down NFC in iPhones to their own payment system?

They're so slow, this is being an issue for years, and there's really no excuse for them to do this other than just protecting their monopoly.

I just switched to an Android some months ago and I can't believe on behind is Apple in certain questions. Apple Pay is a pain compared to Google Pay, and some cards aren't even available on Apple Pay for no reason.

> Apple Pay is a pain compared to Google Pay

interesting. can someone expand on this?

Curious as well, since whatever you do not like about Apple Pay, it actually works very well (not a single issue I had).

This how Apple Pay works to make a physical payment (which is the main case of this thread): 1 - Click two times on the iPhone powerbutton 2 - Unlock the phone with the FaceID 3 - Take the phone and put it on top of the terminal

ALSO, if you're already using your phone, you must press again the powerbutton two times, unlock Apple Pay with FaceID and then put the phone on top of the terminal.

Google Pay (using a Galaxy S22...) 1 - Unlock the phone using the fingerprint reader 2 - Put it on top of the terminal

If you're already using the phone just put it on top of a terminal and will pay your bill.

Seems like a small issue, but considering that until a few weeks ago we were still using masks, I sometimes had to input my phone pin in front of everyone to access Apple Pay, even if I had the phone unlocked before getting to the pay terminal...

Summing up, basically Google Pay it's way more practical.

> This how Apple Pay works to make a physical payment (which is the main case of this thread): 1 - Click two times on the iPhone powerbutton 2 - Unlock the phone with the FaceID 3 - Take the phone and put it on top of the terminal Google Pay (using a Galaxy S22...) 1 - Unlock the phone using the fingerprint reader 2 - Put it on top of the terminal

i thought it was something more serious.

anyway, apple already solved this using express pay, which is faster than google pay: https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-pay/transport/

> Paying for journeys on Transport for London is easier with Express Mode for Apple Pay. You no longer need to authenticate your payment with Face ID or Touch ID. Simply select a card for travel in Wallet. Then just tap your iPhone or Apple Watch on the yellow card reader and go.

That's not the way it works on my iPhone (2020 SE). Move the phone over the payment terminal, it senses the NFC terminal, wakes up with my default payment card shown, I put my thumb on the sensor and payment is made.

This description of Apple Pay UX is simply incorrect. With Apple Pay on my last two iphones: I first hold my phone to the terminal, the phone wallet app opens automatically to default card, look at phone screen to confirm amount, FaceID unlocks nearly instantly, and double-tap power button to confirm. It takes 3-4 seconds tops.

If you have a touchID iphone you don’t even have to look at the phone screen, although that is a bad idea as you’re not confirming the transaction amount. The terminal’s screen could be lying to you.

> and some cards aren't even available on Apple Pay for no reason

I think it depends entirely on the bank.

Read somewhere that depends mostly on Apple apparently... Google Pay supports all those cards so, makes no sense.

Can you give an example of a card/financial institution where it's available on Google Pay but not Apple Pay?

It's not too hard to compare as both of them publicly list supported cards:

For example Brazil (because it's near the top on the Apple link): https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204916#brazil versus https://support.google.com/pay/answer/7572319

I'm 100% for choice, and I support the EU's (and any other entity) efforts to change this, but I have a simple question for those here:

When you pull out your device, and raise it to a POS terminal, what is the behavior that you expect and/or desire?

For me personally, the behavior I desire is basically what happens today: the digital Wallet opens, and I choose which card I want to pay with (or do nothing and allow my default card to be used).

If we want to flip this experience on its head, what are our options? A configuration for NFC/payments that controls this behavior?

I'm simply trying to think of the cause and effect here. I am not a designer/UX person, simply just a dumb backend engineer, but I have a strong appreciation for good UX/design and absolutely know it when I see it. Curious to hear other's thoughts/opinions on this.

Apple gets 0.15% of each purchase. I think this is as simple as: Other companies want that cut for themselves, and so are pushing the EU to allow for rent-seeking on Apple's financial platform.

I understand the /why/, but that wasn't my question. I'm curious what sort of behavior others hope/expect to see from their mobile device if things change towards a fragmented experience of apps being used for NFC payments and not our digital wallets.

Are you suggesting that things basically remain the same, sans any fees?

> Are you suggesting that things basically remain the same, sans any fees?

I'd sure hope so, unless the point for the companies lobbying for this is to kneecap the Apple Pay user experience. My feeling is that the UX itself isn't on trial since partner brands are front and center during Apple Pay transactions.

That seems to run contrary to what others believe here.

> That seems to run contrary to what others believe here.

They could be right, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are companies willing to make everyone's experience poorer if they think it could help them.

A real-life example of this "doesn't play well with others" philosophy is Netflix. Instead of being a good Apple TV citizen, they refuse to integrate with the system TV app, with universal search, etc. Somehow they think being a good ecosystem partner is a risk, but in fact, every inconvenience reminds me to reevaluate whether they're worth it.

Same behavior when paying, but allow me to configure which payment processor is being used, so I can pick the one that gives me the best benefits (increases insurance, cash back, miles, whatever).

As a user, isn't that already the case? When I use my AMEX, or Chase cards via Apple Pay, I accrue the same amount of points/cash back as if I were to swipe the card or enter the number directly.

I don't understand, what stop you from having a settings that allow you to select which app manage this ?

Excuse my ignorance, I keep seeing those hefty fines on big tech companies, but does the EU targets also other types of industries ? For example Visa Mastercard duopoly, etc

From what I remember they are forced to use/create some open standards in the hope that it'll leave the door open just wide enough so that competition might appear...but it's done in such a way that it does not really help.

Capping interchange fees dealt a big blow to many of the biggest problems of Visa/Mastercard duopoly (i.e., lack of incentive to reduce interchange fees).

Isn't it strange that Apple invents a technology, begins to use it for their own business and then Europe says Apple is unfairly preventing other companies from using this technology? What are we missing here?

For starters, Apple didn’t invent it. Tap to pay was around on the EU long before Apple got there with physical cards. Then it was available on Android via some banking apps, then Google, and finally Apple. Apple was literally the last company to implement this from the perspective of the EU (the Netherlands only got access to Apple Pay a couple of years ago).

The reuters article is a little light on content but I found those remarks : https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech...

The complaint is about Apple not allowing 3rd party usage of their NFC chip for other wallets (or anything else for that matter. From my understanding, the access is very limited) :

Quoting :

As a result, users of Apple devices can only pay with the ‘tap and go' function using Apple Pay and not with other wallets. This is because competing wallet developpers need access to the NFC on Apple devices to reach Apple users.

Interestingly they also say that the Digital Market Acts will regulate this :

When it enters into the force, the Digital Markets Act will have a direct effect on digital payments. It will require companies designated as gatekeepers to ensure effective interoperability with hardware and software features they use themselves in their ecosystems. This includes access to NFC for mobile payments.

(IANAL but I find it interesting that they mention specific upcoming regulation tailored to curtail this, while still sending to Apple what they call a Statement of Objection)

My vague (and possibly completely wrong) understanding from the situation here in France is that banks have to individually sign up for this, but on the backend the payment processing is piggybacking on Mastercard/Visa payment network, as from day one, Apple Pay worked on everything (with some caveats) that accepted NFC payment (which most terminals did). Transactions show up on your receipt as (in my case) a "classic" Mastercard transaction.

This doesn't seem to be the way Apple Pay is implemented everywhere though (particularly in the US) ? This may be anecdotal but I had this discussion with a restaurant owner who mentioned that Apple Pay payments from some US customers didn't work (while in my case I've noticed eu/fr variant of Apple Pay worked pretty much everywhere). This could be some random other issue though.

It would be interesting to know if in other EU countries this is always the same, piggybacking on your bank/card network.

While I broadly understand the idea of opening up the NFC to 3rd party wallets, it's unclear to me how much of a practical idea that would be. As someone who uses Apple Pay daily, I don't see how having to open a 3rd party wallet app would be comparatively effective, it's all about the convenience of being able to triggering it instantly.

A better solution would be mandating/allowing those 3rd party wallets not only NFC integration but having their payment options showing up in Apple's Wallet so they can be triggered the same way (double tap on your iPhone/Apple Watch, which already lets you pick between various Apple Pay cards/QR codes you may have entered).

How many times has the EU squeezed Apple for money because their policies and politics stifle innovation and don't reward success? The EU treats American tech companies like their own personal piggy bank.

Innovation? Contactless payment have been a thing for years in the EU. First on physical cards, then on android. Apple locking down NFC access for wallet apps is nothing more than a forced monopoly.

Apple is the only stifling innovation. They own 30% of the smartphone market is the west, so the EU wants them to be regulated as a fair platform where competition can exist. The US should take a hint.

Maybe it is the right call from the EU. I don't know honestly.

BUT for a fact it seems the EU is just capable of doing antitrust over fb, google, msft, apple and so on without creating such companies by it self... So maybe over regulated?

So you don't know and do not care to explore further whether or not it's doing a good job, but you want it to do less of it. A really weird take to be honest.

I would love to see EU companies like apple, fb, google and so on. Instead what I see is that the EU is just trying to regulate them, without having at least one champion in the same league. So maybe the laws are the reason that the EU is so far behind.

Behind on tech companies, or forward in consumer rights?

Behind in tech companies, forward in useless consumer nagging

I am looking at you, EU cookie notice.

Please stop blaming these cookie notices on the law. The law clearly states no notice is required if no consent is required, but companies choose to annoy you.

The law - not the companies - explicitly forbids me from expressing my preferences globally at the browser level.

I know exactly what I am ready to accept - and what I want to reject. The law says "you have to repeat your preferences individually for each and every domain, you cannot have a system that applies your preferences automatically to everyone"

As a consequence I stand my ground: The law - not the companies - is nagging me.

Please provide a source for this claim. The GDPR is intentionally technically non-specific to allow for a wide array of technical solutions.

In fact one of the failures of DNT was its lack of regulatory backing, and its successor is specifically being designed to be a browser wide, GDPR compliant solution.

> The law [...] explicitly forbids me from expressing my preferences globally at the browser level.

You are wrong. I have in fact read the law and if you think this you have not. Please do so if you are curious what it does in fact forbid, you can start here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

I think what they meant is that consent has to be informed and specific, and he wants to give uninformed consent to any and all data collection, or wants to never be asked for consent.

I think (IANAL, but I have worked in this space with lawyers. Follow my advice at your own discretion, or rather please do not and ask a professional) a case could be made for global consent to be (broadly) appropriate, if your consent is indeed informed (i.e. the plugin asks you to read and understand what analytics cookies are, tracking cookies are and marketing cookies are). Of course, if your consent is "do to me what you want, even if it is an atrocity nobody has conceived of yet and I cannot be bothered to learn about", it is true that that cannot fall under such a requirement. Such consent would be meaningless and such a statement fundamentally indicative of what I can only term an extremely self-destructive frame of mind. I don't think that needs to be tolerated at this level, because it is not good for society to see this as anything but a problem.

I think you have read the wrong law and I have have read the right one, as the cookie handling requirements are defined in the ePrivacy Directive of 2002 and amended in 2009, not the GDPR.

You can start here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

You will discover under section (17), that the lawmaker does - in fact - force everyone to give specific and informed consent. Which means that each and every website has to provide me a wall of informative text and a specific button to click. Aka: nag me.

I am not allowed to give a blanket "accept all" or "reject all" or "accept analytics, reject marketing" consent for all websites as this would be categorised as "uninformed and unspecific" consent, which is illegal. So the EU is responsible.

You are wrong. Such things are not forbidden, just not implemented. Again, a corporation is free to make a consumer-friendly solution that applies to everyone. But why would they? They'd expend effort just to annoy you less and let's face it, you're ready to accept any amount of annoying as long as you get what you want.

Edit: And besides, the point of this is analytics is unnecessary. As such, a company could opt not to have it. No consent required for an absence. They don't have to nag you for nothing.

I see it as the US government doing nothing to modulate the behaviour of the bullies it produces in companies, mostly because that is it's own foreign policy also. You are complaining about other countries not liking US corporate policy, which while a very US citizen thing to do simply is not very relevant.

These corporations must be raised properly and reminded that they too have to follow the law, or they will do to the whole world what they have already done to the US. Nobody outside of the US is looking for such a society, so it makes sense to take as much action as is required to prevent it.

To give but one example, the EU had a Youtube rival, Dailymotion, which was doing quite fine, until Google bought Youtube and used its immense power to artificially sustain it despite its massive losses. Youtube didn't prevail because of innovation or competitivity, but because of the massive weight thrown around by Google as a conglomerate.

The same thing would happen with Spotify right now, if it's not protected. Amazon, Apple and Google don't need music to make money, they don't need to be competitive in that sector to sustain their music activity, they can just use their quasi-monopoly in other sectors to kill all the other players.

On the last part, I don’t think there are any thing inherently wrong when a bigger player is applying massive pressure. Such as the mentioned need of earning money from the those services.

What I have a problem is certain most righteous company on the planet are claiming Spotify as evil because they paid less to labels / singers etc.

> So maybe over regulated?

Doesn't look like FB, Google, MSFT or Apple are anywhere close to exiting the EU market because of regulations so ... maybe not?

Or perhaps those companies are simply not possible without anti-competetive, unethical or plain rent-seeking behaviour? Therefore if the EU can finally get to grips with the rule breakers from the US we will see a diverse range of providers in the market.

So yes, the EU is more consumer friendly than the US

Or perhaps those companies are simply not possible without anti-competetive, unethical or plain rent-seeking behaviour? The question is do you want companies like Apple to exists.

If the answer is yes, then maybe you should make it as easy as possible to create them. It is obvious that for some reason's the EU is far behind. Also in other "new" areas like crypto or self driving there are far less innovations coming from the EU. In my opinion it is because of messy regulations where you have the EU + each Country has it's own rules.

> The question is do you want companies like Apple to exists.

> If the answer is yes

But the answer in the EU is clearly no. The EU doesn't want anti-competitive, unethical and rent-seeking companies to exist.

The idea is that if such anti-competitive companies didn't exist, their niche might be occupied by companies fostering a real competitive environment which would benefit consumers.

Speak for yourself, nobody in this entire country asked for this - but a small state has no say. First fix the democratic process, then make statements like this.

Well, this was a decision by the European Commission which is made up of one representative for each EU country, so this is one of the cases where every country has the same voice, yours as well as mine.

Assuming from your login name that you are from Czech republic, our countries, both having 10 million inhabitants, are also clearly not "small states" regarding the EU although our local politicians like to make it seem like we are powerless within the EU.

But my other country is France and since politicians there cannot reasonably complain about "being forgotten because we are small", they just find other excuses like Germany, or small countries - like ours - having too much decisional power.

The first democratic process that needs to be fixed is at the level of countries. The EU is far from being the most important dysfunctional level of administration right now.

> The first democratic process that needs to be fixed is at the level of countries. The EU is far from being the most important dysfunctional level of administration right now.

That for sure. But we didn't have problems such as this, where the EU commission representative had virtually zero approval, without the EU. There are no safe guards, and it goes completely around ours - and yes, we do have them! That's not good democracy.

Our representation in EU parliament of course wasn't able to do anything about it since it has less than 2.5% of seats - and the national parliament (that would've surely voted against it) was thus forced to incorporate it, even though everybody here hates it.

A country where nobody wants something and yet it happens is not a democracy, it merely acts like one with all this voting and parliaments.

Ok then the EU wants something like Gorillas (German unicorn start up) instead? Food delivery for low prices, where young students are exploited. Instead of providing high paying job's like apple does...

You're downvoted but it's true, there isn't a big company in EU that isn't exploitative. The biggest are banks and loan sharks. And not a single one pays good wages.

This seems like a good reason to strongly regulate big companies in general. If that discourages there from being big companies then that seems like it might be a good thing.

But we want big companies! We offer everything and the neighbor's dog to them! Tax breaks, special laws, loans, etc... And that's good, and people here think so as well! The only problem is, the environment here is not friendly to moonshot tech startups that could grow big, so instead we only have exploitative big businesses that have enough lawyers, dotation referents and contacts in the public sphere.

Sarcasm is hard to detect online. The largest companies in EU are not banks and I don't see how you can distinguish non-exploitative companies from the "its ok to have suicidal labour in China" without sounding anti-capitalist.

I really don't think the factory was owned by Apple. AFAIK Apple was a customer and they lobbied to have things changed once they knew it, and they also have a clear track record of switching suppliers in case of problems like this dating from before this issue came to light. That's clearly anti-exploitative to me. It's not easy to know these things about your suppliers, these companies work hard to hide it.

So a bank is exploitative but a company with exploitation in its supply chain isn't. My point is, with that line you'll end up sounding like an anti-capitalist when it comes to European companies but not American ones.

Stop putting anti-capitalism into my words, you'll never find it, and if you do it's only your own bias.

Once Apple knew there is a problem, they fixed it - and they fixed problems like this many times before the issue you're talking about, without any fuss in the media. They don't have a crystal ball. These Chinese companies go to extraordinary lengths to present their best face to you and the public. It's very hard to know this stuff without looking for it (I mean directly at the place, with your own eyes) - and it's very hard even if you look for it, and actual Chinese secret police agents will try to stop you from knowing and publicizing it.

Whereas the banks and loan sharks have built their entire business on financial exploitation. Of course that's entirely different from Apple. I still haven't seen a single good product from a bank, everything they offer is used only because of necessity - whereas people buy iPhones and Macs because it's excellent technology, not because it's a must.

>Once Apple knew there is a problem, they fixed it

Once the media found out Apple fixed it

>and they fixed problems like this many times before

I am struggling to read this as a good thing. Once it happens once maybe you should audit your supply chains properly.

There is zero evidence at all that Apple knew before media knew; and there is plenty of evidence Apple is fixing this stuff ASAP without medialization.

It's totally unrealistic to expect hardware companies to watch every factory of their supply chain all the time. You're living in some kind of fantasy-land if you think this is in any way even remotely feasible, sorry.

Apple has much better score than other companies with issues like this, anyways. Why don't you focus on the others instead of talking about the one company that cares about this and fixes it asap?

>Apple has much better score than other companies with issues like this

Is there an objective scoring system you can point me to? Or a league table?

>It's totally unrealistic to expect hardware companies to watch every factory of their supply chain all the time

And totally realistic to expect that they had engineers at their major supplier on a regular basis...we are not talking about the people that made the resistors, we are taking about the main assembly plant. I would be suprised if Apple QA were not there full time.

I'm sorry but you don't sound like you have a lot of insight into it beyond what we all read at the time. It makes you sound like a fan boy trying to excuse the inexcusable

> Instead of providing high paying job's like apple does...

Is this a joke? You do know that people living outside the US are actual human beings right? Because the people that were building the actual $1500+ iphones were literally jumping from the factory windows to their deaths due to terrible working conditions, pay and psychological torment.

The Apple fanboyism never ceases to amaze me in hn.

Perhaps the question you should ask is: What would exist instead if Apple didn't exist. If you are imagining no tech companies at all, then obviously this is worse. If the answer is a lot of smaller tech companies all competing with each other, then this may be a much better situation.

Maybe one final remark. If you have high competition that often leads to exploitation of the work force - to out compete each other. So it might sounds great but it is not always the case. Although I agree that no competition might be bad as well. Guess there is no clear answer.

Another way to think of it is the EU is promoting competition.

EU is making it easier for founders to explore new payment methods or grow alternative payment providers or crypto solutions who would otherwise miss a massive opportunity.

I believe this will actually grow the Apple ecosystem by giving established companies a reason to build their brand on the iOS platform where they might otherwise have avoided it for lack of control over transactions.

Microsoft and Apple were founded before EU was created, Google was founded before Eurozone was created and Facebook was founded before Lisbon treaty signed - EU is late in this game as a political entity. Do we need companies with trillion dollar valuation here? No, we do not. Political weight of companies that worth more than GDP of majority of EU countries would be too big for a healthy democratic system. Still we have plenty of successful unicorns and established companies in digital space that are expanding beyond the EU (Spotify, SAP, Klarna, Flixbus, HelloFresh etc).

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