Australia’s payments landscape is shifting fast as contactless mobile transactions surge and regulators in Canberra and overseas try to keep up. Digital wallets have moved from niche to mainstream in just a few years, with phones now used for around half of all in‑store card payments and nearly one in five online transactions going through major wallet brands. Behind the scenes, banks, tech platforms and regulators are wrestling over who controls the key technology that makes those payments possible and who collects the fees.
In this context, a major Australian bank is urging the Reserve Bank to use recent amendments to the Payment Systems (Regulation) Act to press a leading smartphone maker to open its near‑field communication (NFC) chip on more even terms. Today, the phone maker charges banks a small fee for every hundred dollars routed through its wallet service, which industry estimates say adds up to well over $100 million a year in Australia alone. In Europe, regulators forced the company to provide NFC access free of charge to rival wallet providers, which has already encouraged at least half a dozen new wallets into the market across countries such as Germany and Spain.
The bank argues that although the phone maker has since announced expanded NFC access in markets such as Australia, the commercial and technical conditions differ from the European model, with undisclosed fees and design choices that may deter new entrants. No major wallets are publicly known to be using these new arrangements yet and competition authorities are separately pressing the government to move ahead with rules that would also require the dominant mobile platforms to allow rival app stores. A federal parliamentary committee is now preparing a public hearing on digital wallets and the Reserve Bank looks set to come under pressure to decide whether it will mandate “reasonable and equivalent” NFC access in line with Europe or continue to rely on voluntary moves by global tech platforms.
The broader outcome seems likely to influence more than just bank-tech fee splits. If regulators act aggressively, Australia could see a wave of new wallets, more choice for merchants and consumers and potentially lower costs over time, though there is uncertainty about how this would affect security standards and innovation incentives. If they move cautiously, existing wallet providers may tighten their hold over a payments channel that already accounts for a large share of in‑store and online transactions, leaving concerns about competition, efficiency and regulatory gaps unresolved. Either way, the battle over who controls the phone’s payment chip is becoming a test case for how Australia balances big tech power with open access in the next phase of digital finance.
