Supplement | HBS Case Collection | September 2018

Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (B)

by Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane

Abstract

In summer 2016, four of Australia’s top five banks petitioned regulators for permission to bargain collectively with Apple over the terms under which they would support its digital wallet, Apple Pay. They argued that doing so would force concessions from Apple that would improve market competitiveness, consumer choice, price transparency, and transaction security for all mobile payments in Australia. The banks stood to benefit as well. If they succeeded in their primary aim of opening the contactless payment functionality of Apple’s devices to their own digital wallets—something Apple had thus far refused in any market it had entered—the banks could retain customer relationships that Apple Pay threatened to usurp and limit Apple’s free-riding on the contactless payment infrastructure the banks had just spent several years building. This case supplements the (A) case, 619-010.

Keywords: payment methods; mobile payment; digital platforms; Apple; Banks and Banking; Cooperation; Problems and Challenges; Policy; Banking Industry; Australia;

Language: English Format: Print 3 pages

Citation:

Zhu, Feng, Susan Athey, and David Lane. "Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 619-011, September 2018.

About the Author

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Feng Zhu
Piramal Associate Professor of Business Administration
Technology and Operations Management

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