Apple faces lawsuit over alleged anti-competitive agreements and crypto restrictions in P2P market
The lawsuit's plaintiffs include Venmo and Cash App users who have paid inflated fees due to Apple's anti-competitive trade agreements
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On November 17, a lawsuit was filed in a California District Court against Apple, alleging that the company entered into anti-competitive agreements with its competitors in the iOS Peer-to-Peer Payment (P2P) market, causing consumers to pay “rapidly inflating prices.â€
The lawsuit claimed that Apple entered into agreements with PayPal's Venmo, Block's Cash App, and Google's Google Pay to restrict the use of decentralised crypto technology in their payment apps.
The lawsuit was filed by four consumers. They represented Venmo and Cash App users who paid inflated fees due to Apple’s trade restraints across the iOS P2P payment market. They alleged that Apple had violated the US antitrust law by entering into such agreements with its competitors.
The lawsuit filing read, “These agreements limit feature competition—and the price competition that would flow from it—marketwide by barring the incorporation of decentralised cryptocurrency technology within existing or new iOS Peer-to-Peer Payment apps.â€
Further, the lawsuit claimed that because Apple uses technological and contractual restraints to exercise unfettered control over every app installed and run on iPhones and iPads, it demands the same agreement from any new iOS P2P payment product as a precondition for entry.
