PayPal launches iPhone NFC payments in Germany after EU forced Apple to open up
German iPhone users are starting to report that they’re now able to use PayPal’s tap-to-pay feature at in-store payment terminals, according to German tech site iPhone Ticker. The new capability, which PayPal announced earlier this month, is a result of the EU forcing Apple to open iPhone NFC chips up for third-party contactless payments under the Digital Markets Act.
PayPal’s contactless wallet works with terminals that support Mastercard payments and is iPhone-only for now, so it won’t work on an Apple Watch, iPhone Ticker reports (via a machine translation). In December, a Norwegian payment app called Vipps became the first to take advantage of Apple’s changing ecosystem, nearly a year after Apple first announced it was opening up its NFC hardware to third-party wallet apps for EU users last year.
Apple hasn’t only opened iPhone tap-to-pay to the EU. It announced in August that it would let developers offer in-app NFC-based payments in the US and other regions, too. The company also allows businesses to use iPhone NFC readers to accept contactless payments in third-party apps, which is a capability PayPal started offering in Venmo and PayPal Zettle in March last year.