The UK competition regulator is proposing additional measures to open up contactless payment technology on Apple devices, after finding that the company’s current offerings haven’t spurred competitors to Apple Pay – the UK’s most popular digital wallet.

In a consultation document published on Tuesday, the Competition and Markets Authority laid out conditions it believes could increase competition, including requiring fair and reasonable terms, including fees.

The fees would not be specified by the regulator itself, but the CMA indicated that the broader market showed that the underlying technology for contactless payments had been offered by companies such as Google for free or with “minimal” fees.

The regulator also proposed requiring Apple to make Host-Based Card Emulation (HCE) available in the UK, as it has done in the European Union.

Currently Apple devices in the UK offer contactless payments via a Secure Element (SE), a high-security chip embedded in the device that stores sensitive data and manages communication over near-field communication (NFC) technology.

HCE, by contrast, stores sensitive information securely off-device and sends a limited number of one-time-use tokens to the device for transactions.

The CMA noted that Apple began offering an NFC and SE platform in the UK in October 2024, but two years later there is “still no evidence of NFC apps launching in the UK using the platform”.

It said stakeholders had raised concerns that current access may not be commercially viable, that fees and non-pricing terms may be onerous, that divergent technical approaches across jurisdictions and platforms could make it harder to scale, and that limits on default status information could weaken developers’ ability compete effectively.

In the EU, by contrast, following legally binding commitments around free NFC access made by Apple to the European Commission in 2024, third-party payment app Vipps launched on iPhones to enable NFC payments, with others launched since then including PayPal, Curve, BVA and Klarna.

“The continued absence of any meaningful consumer-facing rollout in the UK creates a clear and pressing case for intervention,” the CMA said in the consultation document.

The CMA has the ability to impose conduct requirements, such as the one it’s currently consulting on, on Apple after designating it and Google last year as having strategic market status in the smartphone market.

The regulator noted that contactless payments now account for 39 percent of all payments, up from 3 percent a decade ago, with more than 60 percent of adults using a digital wallet, the latter market being dominated by Apple in the UK.

The CMA is consulting on the proposed conduct requirement until 17 November.

Online bank Revolut welcomed the proposals, but Apple said the measures would mean lower privacy and security protections for users.