Belfius, one of Belgium’s major banks, launched Apple Pay support for its customers on Thursday. At least for now, Apple Pay only works with Belfius credit cards using the Visa and Mastercard networks. None of the cards from the Bancontact network work with Apple Pay, but that’s about to change.
In a statement to HLN, Belfius confirmed that Bancontact and Maestro debit cards will be available on Apple Pay “later this year.” For those unfamiliar, Bancontact is an interbank network from Belgium that competes with Mastercard and Visa.
Apple Pay under investigation in Europe
Apple has been under investigation by the European Union’s antitrust commission over how the company restricts the NFC technology in the iPhone to its own payments platform.
The EU argues that Apple abuses its dominant market position and restrictions in iOS to prevent third parties from having full access to the iPhone’s NFC chip. As a result, other platforms are unable to compete with Apple Pay on iPhone. The investigation has been supported by other companies such as PayPal.
Apple this year announced “Tap to Pay” for iPhone, which turns the phone into a contactless card terminal for receiving payments via third-party apps. However, this still doesn’t let other apps provide their own NFC payment solutions on iPhone.
