A PYMNTS Company

Google and PayPal portend antitrust harms flowing from Project Oscar

By  |  May 1, 2012

Google and PayPal have warned the European Commission on competition problems posed by a mobile payments joint venture, reports the Financial Times. The joint venture, dubbed Project Oscar, is between U.K. mobile phone operators Vodafone, Telefónica’s O2, and Everything Everywhere (a Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom entity). Google and PayPal expressed their concerns that the joint venture will deter new entrants and competitors into the new mobile payments market. The venture has the ability to control the market through a microchip on a SIM card–mobile operators could refuse to sell or subsidize phones that run a competing mobile wallet service.

Full content: Financial Times (registration required)

 

Related content: Payments Innovation and Interchange Fees Regulation: How Inverting the Merchant-Pays Business Model Would Affect the Extent and Direction of Innovation (David S. Evans, Global Economics Group)

 

Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.