“The group of four banks collectively bargaining for access to the iPhone’s near-field communication (NFC) technology have baulked at settling for payment alternatives such as Android Pay, calling them “unrealistic” in the Australian market,” Asha McLean reports for ZDNet. “The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Westpac Banking Corporation, the National Australia Bank (NAB), and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank have been seeking regulatory approval since mid-last year to collectively negotiate with third-party mobile providers such as Apple.”
“In its most recent submission [PDF] to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the banking cartel explained that its members developed their own NFC mobile wallets on the Android platform prior to current multi-issuer mobile wallets being announced, and expressed interest in doing the same on Apple’s platform,” McLean reports. “Throughout the process, the banks have claimed that they want access to the NFC controller in iPhones and reduced their argument last month to solely focus on such, as Apple currently does not allow any other entity direct access to its technology.”
“The banks also expect other providers of mobile wallets and other NFC functions to soon emerge, which they said might include merchants, telecommunications providers such as Optus Pay in Australia or Singtel and Orange internationally, and fintech startups such as Myki Plus — an NFC app sprouting from Melbourne’s public transit cards — but only on the Android platform,” McLean reports. “‘These alternatives are unrealistic in Australia, which has the world’s highest adoption of contactless NFC card payments and one of the world’s highest iPhone market shares, particularly among customers likely to use mobile payments,’ the banks said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last November:
Dear Aussie banks: No, you cannot have access to iPhone’s NFC chip. Protecting iOS users’ security is of paramount importance.
Note that no other banks in the world require direct access to iPhone’s NFC chip in order to support Apple Pay.
SEE ALSO:
Australian Banks tell Apple: It’s not about your Apple Pay Fees, it’s about access to NFC – February 13, 2017
Apple Pay boss says Aussie customers willing to dump banks who fail to support Apple Pay – February 10, 2017
Apple steps up battle with Australian banks over Apple Pay boycott motive – February 6, 2017
ACCC proposes to deny authorisation for banks to collectively bargain with and boycott Apple on Apple Pay – November 29, 2016
Australian banks dismiss Android NFC past in Apple Pay negotiations – November 14, 2016
Australian banks accuse Apple of anti-competitive behavior, want access to iPhone’s NFC chip to take on Apple Pay – July 28, 2016
ANZ welcomes Apple Pay in Australia with a funny new TV ad – May 5, 2016
Apple expands Apple Pay in Australia with ANZ bank deal – April 28, 2016
Aussie consumers lose as banks effectively boycott Apple Pay – November 27, 2015
Australian banks accuse Apple of anti-competitive behavior, want access to iPhone’s NFC chip to take on Apple Pay – July 28, 2016
ANZ welcomes Apple Pay in Australia with a funny new TV ad – May 5, 2016
Apple expands Apple Pay in Australia with ANZ bank deal – April 28, 2016
Those four banks nay want to negotiate collectively with Apple to bring Apple’s security down to the level of Android, but it hasn’t dawned on them that Apple is not gonna do that. For the same reasons that Apple refused to insert a back-door in their iOS for US spies to use.
Slow learners they are, those banks.🤑
Learners? Ha, that would be a new one for the uniform uninformed ones there.
Sour grapes
It is not that the Banks want access to the NFC to support Apple Pay. They want direct access to the NFC to enable their own proprietary banking apps to support NFC (“Apple Pay-Like”) access for their own purposes on the iPhones, thereby completely bypassing and basically invalidating Apple Pay. That is ridiculous.
See (in that article):
“the banking cartel explained that its members developed their own NFC mobile wallets on the Android platform prior to current multi-issuer mobile wallets being announced, and expressed interest in doing the same on Apple’s platform”
Exactly. I don’t know about Aussies, but for me an integrated Apple Pay that I can put ALL my credit cards, from any bank into sure beats a separate app for each credit card.
If those apps specific to each of the Aussie banks were only used for NFC payments I would agree with you. However, looking at what the Android Apps offered by those banks do, I can see why they have advantages over a more general payment system like Apple Pay/Samsung Pay/Google Pay. Those apps are designed to be specific to each bank and many of their services in a one-stop App. One feature just happens to be NFC payment.
Interesting. Still, I don’t need a full blown banking app to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Rather blip my Apple Watch.
I can see that. On the other hand for those banks, perhaps their customer base is rather loyal in having very few credit cards in the first place which would make a more general payment app unnecessary. In that scenario, a single app that does all your banking functions including NFC payments might be preferable. Why carry around an entire wallet when you only have 1 or 2 cards?
On iOS, banks also have their apps. And all of those services that you ever to are still available. However, when you’re in a store ready to pay, your phone simply wakes the Apple pay utility and pays with the card of your choice. No need to launch any app, it is all automatic. You can still go back to the app for all other services if you wish. The only one service that you can’t do from the app is point-of-sale purchase transaction. That is done by the iOS.
That’s great. But still doesn’t change the convenience of a single App for everything related to that bank for those with only one or two credit/debit cards. Also those bank specific Apps on Android never have your complete CC number either (most likely just the last 4 digits so you can differentiate) so are just as secure sending a token via NFC as ApplePay.
Desperate times call for desperate measures…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/apple-payled-surge-in-anz-card-customers-drives-rival-banks-to-renegotiate-20160509-goppf0.html
The banks are making a lot of noise about why they want direct access to Apple’s NFC chip ( which Apple will never agree to ), but I haven’t read a sensible explanation of exactly
why those banks are unable to adopt Apple Pay, as has been successfully done by countless other banks around the world and also by other public transport systems.
Clearly they would like to circumvent Apple Pay for their own reasons, but I don’t understand how they imagine that their customers would benefit from their proposal compared to allowing Apple Pay to be used instead?
That would be very difficult to argue, since the primary reason banks want to circumvent Apple Pay is so that they can sell customer purchasing habits with advertisers. Apple Pay takes that data away from them (as well as form merchants). The other, likely minor, reason is that they have to pay commission on every transaction. This is unlikely a reason at all, since that commission is probably lower than the average losses on fraud that would disappear for users of ApplePay.
It’s money. They don’t want to pay anything. There is an inquiry going on at present about the banks’ practices, and this is another example of it. These banks have absolutely no concern for customer service or benefit. It is about shareholder profits.
CBA spent nearly two years developing an NFC case for the iPhone 4. We all know what happened two years after the iPhone 4 was released. All to avoid paying interchange fees.
I think you’re thinking of the iCarte which was developed by a Canadian company. They made cases for the iPhone 3G to iPhone 5 that enabled iPhones to read and write via RFID and have other general NFC capabilities.
At least they made cases for a variety of iPhones. CBA committee to the iPhone 4 form factor and then switched to a sticker (ugh!)
The articles I came across when CBA announced their iPhone NFC capable App made sole use of the iCarte. So you’re saying CBA decided not to use it and just went with a sticker?
We all know that they are looking to maximise their profits and exploit data from their customers, but what I’ve never found is exactly how they are pitching this idea?
They obviously can’t say “we’re too stingy to pay Apple and we also want to sell data about customers”, so how are they explaining why Apple Pay is uniquely unsuitable in Australia when it works brilliantly everywhere else? The only thing that seems unique about Australia in this context is the self interests of a cartel of banks.
Colluding bullies
As I have iterated before in similar discussions…
I am with Westpac, one of the ‘Big 4’, and I have been with them for 40 years. I am too entrenched to change, however my mortgage is with ANZ and there is a cash account that accompanies it. I now do all my payments of this type through them and their Apple Pay support and once a month I transfer a lump sum to cover it from my Westpac account. As a result Westpac has lost any income from transaction fees for my purchases. ANZ has now benefited from its proactive efforts.
Maybe, eventually, the ‘Big 4’ with the ‘Lowest 4’ business practices will learn. Maybe…