EU Competition Commissioner: Apple Pay antitrust complaints are mounting

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has claimed that antitrust complaints over Apple Pay have been piling up in her office since a questionnaire was sent out to banks and rival payment system providers in August this year.

Vestager added that she also has "many, many concerns" over the payment technology, released in October 2014 and integrated with all of Apple's new iPhones since the iPhone 6.

Apple Pay has grown quickly, with the service surpassing PayPal in the company's most recent quarter, processing more than three billion transactions. Revenues have doubled compared to the same quarter last year. The company, though, is reticent to reveal precise revenues generated by Apple Pay.

Reuters reports that, as part of the probe instigated by the European Commission, the EU regulator is also asking online retailers whether they have been made contractually obliged to use Apple's payment system over rival services.

Speaking at nerdfest Web Summit this week, Vestager revealed that since the questionnaire was sent out, she has received a high number of complaints.

"We've been asking quite a number of questions because we get many many concerns when it comes to Apple Pay for pure competition reasons," said Vestager, without specifying who had expressed concern.

"People see it becomes increasingly difficult to compete in the market for easy payments."

Earlier reports have suggested that the EU Commission's biggest concern with Apple Pay relates to Apple's proprietary Near-Field Communication (NFC) chip, which the service relies on to enable users to pay at stores by just holding their phones near a card reader.

Vestager has said that she is aware of reports that Apple has been limiting the use of the NFC chip to only cards included in Apple Wallet, noting that no such restrictions on NFC permissions for cards or banking apps exist on Android's alternative, branded Google Pay. Samsung also has its own payment technology, called Samsung Pay.

Apple, which last year settled an NFC-related spat with Swiss payment company TWINT, has long argued that limiting access to the NFC chip provides better security. It claims that this is one of the reasons why consumers opt for Apple Pay in the first place.

It also says that payment providers can access iPhone users using alternative technologies, like QR codes, which once scanned can trigger a payment.