“The Reserve Bank has been urged to examine potential anti-competitive behaviour in the emerging card-free payments market amid claims the banks have frozen out newcomer Apple Pay,” Heath Aston reports for The Sydney Morning Herald.
“Labor’s spokesman on digital innovation, Ed Husic, has written to the RBA and the Australian Bankers’ Association, raising his concern that Australians are being “denied choices” in digital payments,” Aston reports. “Apple Pay, which allows consumers to leave credit and bank cards at home by making purchases with an iPhone or Apple watch, launched in Australia less than a fortnight ago but all the banks have so far refused to support the new app by allowing customers to link their bank account to their phone.”
“Mr Husic, who has been a vocal critic of Apple’s pricing in the past, has written to RBA governor Glenn Stevens, expressing dismay at claims retail banks have ‘effectively boycotted’ the new payment system,” Aston reports. “‘Australian consumers should not be denied the ability to make payment choices that are openly available to consumers globally,’ Mr Husic wrote. ‘No doubt some will argue this move by the banks is anti-competitive – I am certainly concerned that it denies consumer access to a secure, efficient payment platform.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, this will get sorted out sooner than later as banks and retailers realize that people want to use Apple Pay, so it is in their best interested to work with Apple instead of collude to blockade it.