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Apple Offers iPhone NFC Chip Access to Apple Pay Rivals in EU
(www.macrumors.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Apple Pay isn't a payment processor. It's a system for banks to provisional additional cards on their customer's devices, which are then processed the same way and for the same fees as tapping the physical card.
Banks want direct access to the NFC because they want to bully people into making their app the default handler for payment cards. One of the great things about Apple Pay is that all banks must compete as equals for every transaction. It's trivially easy to switch which card you use when you pay and every card gets the same best user experience.
Forcing NFC open is, paradoxically, anti-competitive, because it makes it easier for the biggest banks to stop competing and instead lock their customers in.
Merchants do not have any relationship with Apple for Apple Pay transactions. You tap your phone and it's treated the exact same way as when you tap your card. The merchant sends it to whoever they use for card processing, who eventually sends it to the card network (Visa, etc.) and to the bank for approval. That's what payment processing is. Apple isn't involved at any step. They are involved in the provisioning process where cards are added to your device.
Apple charges a fee to the issuing bank, which comes out of their share of the card processing fee paid by merchants. The original (2014) reported fee for US credit card transactions was 0.15%. Card processing fees are, in general, significantly cheaper in Europe (and indeed most other countries). We don't even know if the US fee is still 0.15% but it definitely isn't in the EU.
Have you literally done zero research into this? The vast majority of merchants in the US, and nearly 100% in many other countries, accept Apple Pay. Doesn't that strike you as awfully high if they actually had to sign up for it with Apple? And add an entirely new payment processor to their operations?
Apple is not involved in any capacity with processing Apple Pay transactions when you tap your device in a business. A Visa card loaded on an iPhone is literally just a contactless Visa. Apple Pay = Google Pay = physical contactless card. One single industry-standard protocol.
For web/app transactions, a merchant has to set up Apple Pay explicitly (though it's still actually processed by the same parties as entering the card number) but for in person, they just need contactless payments enabled on their card terminal. No extra steps, parties, or fees.
That graphic is really good. I've seen a lot of graphics that try to explain it but most of them make mistakes; that one is surprisingly perfect.
At this point I vote we just consider it trolling. The best case alternative is that it's merely aggressively-protected ignorance, and that's not worth engaging with either.
Hey, OP commenter here, you have been fully correct throughout this thread. Here is an apple engineer explicitly stating that you're correct.
I work with this technology, as well as dozens of actual payments processors, every day, so I find what they're saying absurd and ... just, the strangest hill to die on.
I've tagged them as a troll. If your app allows it, I suggest you do the same.
I feel like I've entered some Twilight Zone. You just keep repeating the same absurd claims about something but if you had ever researched it in any capacity you'd know how false those claims are.
"Apple Pay is accepted at over 85 percent of retailers in the U.S."
Look, it's really simple: If a store accepts contactless cards, it by definition accepts Apple Pay. They are the same thing to the merchant. There are zero merchants that take contactless cards but can't take Apple Pay.
As for costs, a random sampling:
Forbes:
US Chamber of Commerce: