Australia's government said on Monday it would bring Apple Pay, Google Pay and other digital payment services under the same regulatory umbrella as credit cards and other payments as part of legislation set to be introduced to parliament this week.
I’m in favour of more regulation of big corporations, especially for financial services, so I’m not ready to dismiss this move as “complete nonsense”.
Apple/Google Pay is an additional intermediary that allows you to pay for things on your devices using your credit card. They charge fees over and above the credit cards, and have power over their respective digital platforms — for example, where and when you can easily use the service.
Now you might counter that they both happen to be pretty fair about that. They haven’t been using their power to unfairly exclude merchants or credit cards, and maybe their fees are fair. I don’t personally know. But the fact that they have the power to not be fair is evidence to me that there is something to be regulated there, independent of regulation of credit card companies.
I’m in favour of more regulation of big corporations, especially for financial services, so I’m not ready to dismiss this move as “complete nonsense”.
Apple/Google Pay is an additional intermediary that allows you to pay for things on your devices using your credit card. They charge fees over and above the credit cards, and have power over their respective digital platforms — for example, where and when you can easily use the service.
Now you might counter that they both happen to be pretty fair about that. They haven’t been using their power to unfairly exclude merchants or credit cards, and maybe their fees are fair. I don’t personally know. But the fact that they have the power to not be fair is evidence to me that there is something to be regulated there, independent of regulation of credit card companies.
They’re not involved in the actually processing of payments though.
The merchant pays the same; they charge the issuing bank a fee. The Australian government already fretted about that years ago but got over it.