Dutch Watchdog Looks Into NFC Payment Apps

The Dutch competition regulator (ACM) has closed its investigation into access to the NFC function on smartphones and other devices. No solution was found for ensuring access by payment apps to the function, confirming the regulator’s concerns about a competition problem on the market. Nevertheless, it has no means to resolve the problem. 

The NFC antenna enables contactless payments using smartphones. As previously reported, Apple has placed a technical restriction on access to the NFC antenna, which means that only cards stored in the Apple Pay wallet (as opposed to another e-wallet on the iPhone) can be used to make NFC payments. Apple’s practice is being investigated by DG Competition, resulted in the German legislator adopting legislation forcing Apple to give access to the NFC antenna, and the recent EC Digital Finance Strategy mentions that the EC may propose legislation forcing access to the NFC antenna. It is therefore surprising to see the ACM open a competition law investigation on the same topic as it would appear to be potentially duplicative, reported Telecom Paper.

In its press release, the ACM emphasizes the freedom of consumers to choose their own method of payment. This would seem to be a reference to Article 8(6) of the EU Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) that gives the holder of a co-badged cards the ultimate choice as to which of the brands on the card should be used to make a payment.

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