Cross Border Merchant Fees

Another small step towards genuine cross border financal competition http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-582_en.htm

Yeah but wasn’t this an offence committed in the past? Interchange fees are capped at 0.2 and 0.3% respectively across the EEA and Schweiz now :thinking:

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It’s a shame that the European Commission doesn’t take similar action over Apple’s alleged impeding of cross-border use of Apple Pay within the EU single market.

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There is a way to report this with them, on the EU commission website.

But I’m not sure they’re going to do anything because it doesn’t breach anything :thinking:

On what basis do you believe that it doesn’t breach anything, when one takes into account the above report?

MasterCard’s flaw was not allowing lower fees to banks in countries where higher fees were in place. This breached the trust as it was charging more for the same service, I presume.

Apple prohibit it entirely in countries where it is not available. What trust is being lost if you never have something in the first place?

In addition to this Apple has to follow country specific regulations wherever they launch Apple Pay, of which its unreasonable to expect them to do this.

I’m still not sure why you believe every multinational company should be held at gunpoint and forced to do everything in every EU country at once. We aren’t at the point of a single state where there’s an EU passport instead of a national one and all our laws are the same.

No, Apple does not have to follow country-specific regulations. It can supply goods and services in any EU country, by having its EU base in Ireland. That’s one of the advantages of the EU single market. But Apple treats each EU country as a separate market, preferring to charge separate prices for goods and services based on a consumer’s country of residence.

I don’t believe that at all. I believe that, under the rules of the EU single market, a consumer should not be prevented from buying goods or services from another country, i.e. a cross-border purchase. In order to allow cross-border purchases, multinational companies don’t need to do anything extra; they simply need to avoid discriminating on place of residence.

We are indeed at that stage for financial services. A financial services firm based in one EEA member state has passporting rights to operate without restriction in all other EEA member states. If you’re referring to passports for individuals, then you’ve missed the point. This is about corporate passporting, not for individuals.

Their banks would not be able to allow Apple Pay without them following the law of the local country, regardless of them having their base in Ireland. The EU single market doesn’t protect this at all.

A customer isn’t paying anything for Apple Pay. Let’s be clear that this is a service that the banks pay for, the customer loses or gains nothing.

They need to be able to launch their product the way they want to launch it, when they want to launch it. Next thing you’ll be telling me foreign banks like ING should be forced to offer me an account if I’m not a resident of their country.

Passporting rights aren’t an instant transition, you have to passport to each country individually and you have go through some steps in the other country. It’s not as simple as you make out.

On top of this even after passporting, it’s common for them to offer a different product in each country, are you saying banks should be forced to offer the same everywhere?

Apple Pay is a financial service. It follows passporting rules.

Price paid is irrelevant to the legislation. Price paid is relevant to contract law, but this isn’t contract law, but statute.

No, you’ve misunderstood. A service provider doesn’t need to propagate its service into each EEA country. But it should allow cross-border purchases of its services, ignoring the postal address of the consumer, unless objective reasons are met, for example a plausible inability to check credit history with respect to offering credit products.

I guess this makes quite a bit of sense towards the idea of the single market, but your banks don’t support apple pay anyways, right?

I can understand maybe if you have a card from another country, but I don’t see why you should be allowed to abuse the EU to get automatic right to a service purely by having an account in another country

How is that abuse? It’s exercising my right to obtain cross-border financial services without discrimination based on my place of residence.

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You are bypassing their releases by using your right of having an account in a foreign country.

No, I’m not. My postal address is irrelevant. If Apple releases a new iPhone in one European country before in another, is a consumer unreasonably “bypassing their releases” if they travel from a country where it is not released to a country where it is released in order to buy it? With services and digital goods, you can remove the travel element, but the principle remains the same.

Why is it? If I wanted to ship you something from America is it still irrelevant. Same principle but service based and location independent.

If you want to physically go to a country and purchase it sure, that’s a physical product. I’m going to say you’re an idiot for wasting the time and money though.

The United States is not in the EU or EEA. If my postal address is in London, why should I be able to buy a service from Edinburgh but not from Calais? Calais is closer than Edinburgh to London, but all are in the EU single market. National borders become irrelevant in a single market.

How is it wasting time and money? It might be profitable to make the trip if one is buying multiple items, perhaps for resale. Or one might be travelling anyway on holiday or business. You need to think outside the box and not consider only the first scenario that comes into your head.

If you wanted me to ship from Poland I could deny that.

You’re inside the Union of countries that agree to be treated as one.

When we have a true single market I’ll agree with you all the way, but until then I’m not going to think its alright to allow people to bypass company launches. I do actually want the EU to move into a single state though, so don’t get me wrong. I’m planning to open a business in Estonia post-Brexit too :wink: I definitely love my European Union

I think of the most likely.