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Apple 'surprised' by Germany's new law to open up mobile payments

Germany has introduced new legislation to deal with money-laundering, and it's causing problems for Apple. On Thursday, the German Parliament passed a raft of new measures to bring the country in line with EU directives on money laundering. These include stricter regulations for real estate agents, notaries, auction houses, and operators of electronic money infrastructure. The legislation didn't specifically name Apple nor Apple Pay, but it basically means Apple and Apple Pay.

The new rule -- which is set to come into effect early next year if passed by the upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat -- stipulates that the tech giant must open up its Apple Play platform to rival providers in Germany. At the moment, traditional bank payment apps can't access the Near Field Communication (NFC) chip in the iPhone or Apple Watch, and have to resort to clunky data transfer methods such as QR codes. Giving competitors' access to this platform (for a fee) would help to even the playing field.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports the following:

"We are surprised at how suddenly this legislation was introduced," Apple said on Friday. "We fear that the draft law could be harmful to user friendliness, data protection and the security of financial information."

A person close to the government coalition said Chancellor Angela Merkel's office had pushed for the committee to withdraw the amendment

That charge was denied by a senior official in the office who said there had been complete consensus within the government over the move. The only question mark had been over whether the Finance Ministry had checked the legislation was legally watertight. With that confirmed, the office had no further reservations, the official said.

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