The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of Russia suspected Apple of violating antitrust laws due to limited opportunities to use banking services and make payments.
In particular, the regulator has already requested from Apple a detailed, motivated position on the issue of access of Russian payment systems to contactless payment in the iOS environment. The FAS press service told Izvestia about this .
Currently, Russian users of iOS devices (including those purchased during their official sales in the Russian Federation) actually cannot use their functionality to receive banking services and make payments. Thus, Apple has removed mobile applications from most domestic financial organizations from the App Store and does not allow them into it.
The company also does not allow applications not from the App Store to be installed on its devices.
Contactless payment on iOS devices is only available through the Apple Pay app, which does not allow you to link Russian bank cards. FAS representatives noted that this makes it impossible to use Mir Pay, SberPay, Tinkoff Pay and others on Apple gadgets.
Apple will make a number of changes to iOS, Safari and the App Store for users of its devices in the European Union, which will allow the installation of alternative application stores, as well as open access to NFC for other contactless payment systems.
In this regard, the antimonopoly service came to the conclusion that Apple has the technical ability to make appropriate changes on equal terms for Russian developers.
According to the FAS, the company’s actions contain signs of violation of antimonopoly legislation. It creates preferential conditions for its own applications and solutions of third-party organizations registered outside the Russian Federation, as well as for Apple Pay compared to Russian payment systems.
At the end of January, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) announced that Apple had paid an antimonopoly fine of almost 1.2 billion rubles.