Apple has found itself in the crosshairs of the European Commission many times over the past few years, and now it’s also being investigated by the Swiss Competition Commission (SCC).
This has to do with access to NFC on iPhones. Apple started to allow third-party access to the NFC chip last year, following an initial opening up in the EU. But if you want to use the iPhone’s NFC chip, you need to enter into a commercial agreement with Apple and pay the fees it requests, and that is precisely what the SCC is investigating.
Namely, the SCC is trying to ascertain whether Apple’s terms and conditions for granting this access could raise competition law concerns in Switzerland. The SCC says “it seeks to clarify whether other providers of mobile payments apps can effectively compete with Apple Pay for contactless payments with iOS devices in shops”.
Interestingly, the SCC says that Apple’s terms and conditions for granting access to NFC to third parties “differ from those applicable in the European Economic Area (EEA)”. This is just a preliminary investigation, however, and it’s unclear how long it will take. We’ll let you know when we find out more.