Image credit – The Sydney Morning Herald
While Apple Pay was launched in Australia back in 2015, there seems to be a collective resistance from the majority of the country’s major banks when it comes to adopting the platform. Recently it seems that the banks have filed a request in which they have asked Apple to open up the iPhone’s NFC to others, a move which Apple is protesting.
According to Apple, they claim that the banks’ request to open up the NFC controller on the iPhone is simply a way for them to circumvent and avoid the use of Apple Pay. At the moment the NFC controller is pretty much limited for use with Apple Pay, and to our knowledge there are no other apps or services that can take advantage of it.
The banks are claiming that by opening up the NFC controller to third-parties, they’ll be able to offer their own digital wallet system which they believe is good for competition, but Apple claims that they are actually requesting this to avoid using Apple Pay and in the process, avoid paying Apple any transaction fee.
That being said, Apple’s denial to allow access to the NFC controller on the iPhone isn’t that surprising. Apple is pretty well known for their “walled garden” approach. After all it did take them a while before opening up Touch ID to third-party developers, and let’s not forget how long it took before Siri was made available for integration with third-party apps as well.