A Norwegian payment app called Vipps is the first service to take advantage of a new, more open iOS ecosystem thanks to EU regulations. Starting today, Norwegians can use Vipps for tap-to-pay transactions and online payments, and they can even set the app as the default payment option on their iPhones, as reported by MacRumors.
It’s all thanks to commitments Apple made in response to scrutiny from EU regulators.
Since its launch a decade ago, Apple Pay has been the only way to use tap to pay on an iPhone. That’s changing with iOS 18.1, which makes tap-to-pay via NFC available to third-party developers for the first time. Apple committed earlier this year to open up the API after EU regulators ruled Apple Pay anti-competitive.
This pressure from the EU has recently forced Apple to open up the famously locked-down iPhone in unprecedented ways, from adding RCS support to letting you delete pretty much any app you want from your phone. But unlocking the NFC chip is a particularly interesting test case since it could usher in a whole bunch of new and helpful ways to use your phone — or create a mess of competing payment and ID storage platforms that don’t cooperate with each other.
Either way, it’s going to be a big deal, and the first step forward into that new era comes from a small financial organization in Scandinavia.