Apple wins court battle against banks in Australia over control of Apple Pay technology

An Australian consumer watchdog has barred four banks from collectively bargaining with Apple for gaining access to the contactless payment technology used in iPhones. Four banks — Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, National Australia Bank and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank — wanted to negotiate with Apple to gain access to its payments technology used in “Apple Pay” for their own apps, avoiding having to pay fees to Apple, the BBC reported on Friday.

The banks do not allow their cards to be used with “Apple Pay” because they never reached agreement on the conditions. By collectively bargaining with the Cupertino-headquartered tech giant, these four banks wanted to convey to Apple that unless it gave them access to its iPhone technology, they would continue to prevent their customers from using Apple Pay.

In its final ruling on Friday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said that the collective threat to boycott Apple was “likely to reduce or distort competition”. The commission said that ruling in favour of the banks would have reduced competition by forcing Apple to act more like Google, whose more open Android operating system allows contactless payments from individual apps.

“It is a tricky issue for a competition regulator to force one competitor to adopt a strategy of the other competitor,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims was quoted as saying. Meanwhile, the banks have said that they were “disappointed” by the decision and would review their future strategies. The near field communication (NFC) system used in “Apple Pay” allows users to transact by just holding their phone to a small terminal, with the money deducted from a bank card registered with Apple Pay.

Comments

New photos show Tesla's massive Nevada factory is coming along

'Guess we shouldn't be too surprised that the what's going to be world's largest factory...continues to get larger. Tesla's Gigafactory, a gleaming white structure amid the muted browns surrounding Reno, Nevada, seems to be coming along, according to photos snapped by NM Group, a company that describes itself as specializing in "surveying and mapping, asset modeling and management, and engineering." The group was recently mapping the area for potential power lines on behalf of an electricity company, according to Tim Hustwayte, a senior client manager based in the United Kingdom. The route took them close to the Gigafactory, and they got some shots that appear to show the factory having bulked up since Tesla's battery cell began rolling off production lines at the start of the year. The Gigafactory employed nearly 3,000 people at the start of the year, less than half of how many people are expected to be employed there...

The Freedom 251 isn’t dead, it’s returned as the Freedom 420 4G feature phone for Rs 420(6.48$)

As we’re all aware by now, the Freedom 251 smartphone turned out to be a sham. The makers of the smartphone, resellers to be precise, were unable to follow through on their promise of delivering a smartphone at Rs 251 to the Indian public. Practically speaking, building such a smartphone was impossible to begin with. The bill of materials alone would place the cost of the device at over Rs 1,000 and despite claims of unnamed “partnerships” and tax breaks under the Make In India initiative, it would have been impossible to bring down the price of the smartphone and the plan fizzled out. Reality struck a harsh blow to the company and it’s offices have since been shut down. The original owners have also quietly disappeared and at least one has been arrested. It now appears that the company never gave up trying. We’ve learned that the company, now under new management, has taken a more realistic approach to the problem and have come up with yet another outra...

Samsung's Galaxy S8 has a killer feature that nobody's talking about

Samsung's Galaxy S8 is packed full of awesome new features like the new larger screen, face recognition and Bixby AI assistant. But there's one pretty killer feature on the phone Samsung didn't bother to mention at its Unpacked event on Wednesday. That feature: a built-in GIF maker. It's not like the Smart Select GIF maker that first appeared on the Galaxy Note 7 and later trickled to Samsung's Galaxy Tab A and Galaxy Tab S3. It's even better. Located within the Gallery app's video section is a little GIF-creation tool that lets you convert a section of any video (even ones you record) into an animated GIF. Unlike the the Smart Select feature on the Note 7, you don't need to manually select a specific area on the screen to capture. Just open up a video within the Gallery app, tap on the GIF icon, and then move the slider along the bottom to select the section of the video you want to convert into a GIF — and that's it!...

TechCruuse

Search This Blog