Australia: ACCC Apple Pay decision prevents customer choice, says Westpac

Westpac disagrees with the competition regulator’s recent decision to deny CBA, Westpac and NABs request to collectively negotiate with Apple over Apple Pay.

Last week the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) denied an application by NAB, CBA and Westpac to collectively negotiate with Apple over access to Apple Pay and the NFC contactless payments features on iPhones. This means that the banks cannot offer their own digital wallets on the iPhone.

Prior to the decision George Frazis, CEO of Westpac consumer bank, had downplayed the banks battle over Apple Pay, and implied it was not worried by the ACCC’s impending decision.

However Frazis backtracked at the AFR 2017 Banking and Wealth Summit where he revealed just how much the bank wants to be able to offer Apple Pay to its customers.

“We want to be able to offer Apple Pay to our customers. If you think about what we’re arguing, it’s really for customer choice. They (the customers) have purchased this iPhone and effectively what Apple is doing is barring the NFC chip from any other application that you may want to put on when it comes to wallet,” Frazis said.

“It’s essentially like barring the GPS on the iPhone to Google Maps and you have to use Apple Maps, and I tell you what you’d have a whole lot of customers that are not too happy about it.”

Full Content: The Australian

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