The CMA takes on Apple's NFC lock, and a Google outage stops card payments

PayLens Newsletter · Tuesday 27 October

TOP STORY

The CMA moves to open the iPhone to rival payment wallets

The UK competition regulator opened a statutory consultation on 20 October on a conduct requirement that would force Apple to give rival wallets access to the iPhone's NFC chip on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. It closes on 17 November.

Contactless is 39 percent of UK payments and no rival wallet has ever launched there, against five in the EU after Apple's 2024 commitments. Access to the secure element is what would let a bank or a domestic scheme put its own tap-to-pay credential on an iPhone.

Competition and Markets Authority · Read the article

• A Google Cloud fault in London stopped card payments

  A power event in Google Cloud's London zone on 20 October took Revolut card payments, transfers and cash withdrawals offline for several hours, with Lloyds and HSBC customers reporting problems too. The Bank of England is now investigating.

  UKOther

• Checkout.com enters in-person payments with Mollie

  Checkout.com, until now an online-only acquirer, launched a device-agnostic in-person platform with Mollie as its first partner, giving merchants one acquiring relationship across store and web in the UK and EEA before a US rollout.

  UKProduct

• Mastercard extends First-Party Trust to Europe

  Mastercard is taking its First-Party Trust dispute rules into Europe, shielding merchants from chargebacks on first-party fraud claims when they submit transaction evidence through the programme. It targets the friendly-fraud disputes merchants cannot otherwise win.

  EURegulatory

• PPRO opens a council for agentic A2A commerce rules

  PPRO set up a Local Payments Council to write rules for AI agents paying over European account-to-account methods, bringing together scheme and method operators from markets including Poland, Belgium and Greece.

  EUPartnership

• The EPC starts a rulebook for wallet authentication

  The European Payments Council launched SCARLET, a scheme to let payment providers accept the EU Digital Identity Wallet for strong customer authentication, covering the liability split, the duties of participating PSPs and the commercial terms.

  EURegulatory

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