Australia to amend law to regulate digital payments like Apple, Google Pay
Australia to amend law to regulate digital payments like Apple, Google Pay
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.
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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.
This is complete nonsense. Does the government even know what it’s saying? Apple Pay just refers to a credit or debit card loaded onto your device. It’s already fully covered by all regulations that apply to the cards themselves.
They’re putting fees on top of your banks card and companies are forced to use their service on iOS. That needs to be regulated.
Literally the next sentence in the article:
Digital wallets […] have exploded in popularity but are not captured by Australian payments law.
The article doesn’t bother explaining what specifically the law does.
Yes, the next sentence is blatantly false.
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.
Apple/Google Pay is an additional intermediary that allows you to pay for things on your devices using your credit card.
They’re not involved in the actually processing of payments though.
They charge fees over and above the credit cards
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.
This almost feels like they’re name-dropping Apple Pay and Google Pay to mask the fact that this is more aimed towards embedded payment systems like WeChat (along with AliPay and whatever hot garbage Musk intends to add to Xitter)?
I wonder if it's going to look at privacy. I don't use Google pay or whatever it's called, as I have zero interest in Google knowing every purchase I make. It's probably not, but that would be nice if they looked at data privacy.
Google Pay can use PayPal, from what I remember.