European Commission Likely To Approve Apple IPhone’s Tap To Pay Feature For Third Parties In May

Apple is expected to open its tap to pay feature for third parties in May in the EU and this will be a change for the iPhone users in the region. The iPhone users received a iOS 17.4 update recently and that includes pay for apps and services outside the Apple’s App Store and ability to use third party app stores. This is made possible due to the European Digital Markets Act.

The European Union has again tamed Apple and not allowed the tech company to do whatever it wanted. The users can also use iPhone’s NFC functionality to allow contactless payments with third party mobile wallets very soon. Earlier this NFC functionally was limited only to the Apple Pay, which is the company’s own service.

Apple has now offered to open up the tap-to-pay NFC function in order to allow contactless payments with third party mobile wallets. The European Commission is expected to agree with Apple’s offer and Reuters has reported this. Apple had initially made the proposition in January after a four-year investigation.

If European Commission manages to approve the plan, Apple will be able dodge the penalty fine which is as big as 10 percent of its global annual turnover. For those who are unknown, Apple was slapped with as much as €1.84 billion fine last month. All this happened because the company was preventing competition from Spotify as well as other rivals via App Store restrictions.