Switzerland’s COMCO opens a preliminary antitrust inquiry into Apple Pay and iPhone NFC access, testing whether third-party payment apps get fair access.
© A. Krivonosov
Switzerland has opened an antitrust preliminary inquiry into Apple Pay and access to NFC on the iPhone. The country’s competition watchdog, the Competition Commission (COMCO), said it is examining whether Apple’s terms might violate local antitrust rules. At the center of the review is how the iPhone’s NFC interface is made available to rivals.
The inquiry was officially launched on December 10 by COMCO’s secretariat. Regulators want to understand whether third-party payment apps on the iPhone can genuinely compete with Apple Pay for contactless payments in stores. The key issue is whether access to the phone’s NFC module is fair and non-discriminatory—because in payments, even small interface rules can tilt the playing field.
Unlike Android, where NFC has long been open to outside services, Apple kept a tight grip on this capability for years. Swiss developers gained only limited access to the iPhone’s NFC at the end of 2024. COMCO now wants to see whether the Swiss terms diverge from those Apple accepted in the European Union. The timing alone suggests Apple opened up cautiously, and regulators are keen to test how far that openness really goes.
Back in July 2024, after pressure from the European Commission, Apple officially opened NFC to alternative payment services across the EU. Switzerland is not part of the bloc, so those arrangements do not apply directly. Even so, COMCO has been consulting with Apple since then and is now collecting input from market participants to assess whether Apple’s “Swiss” rules meet the standards of local competition law. It’s a signal that Switzerland intends to set its own guardrails rather than rely on EU precedents.