Apple is facing an anti-competitive lawsuit over ‘horizontal restraints’ in the iOS peer-to-peer (P2P) payment market.

The filing by several Venmo and Cash App customers in a California court claims that the tech giant’s ‘mirroring agreements’ which it has with each of its horizontal competitors in the iOS P2P Payment Market, including Venmo owner Paypal, Cash App owner Block, and Google Pay, limit feature competition and the price competition that would “flow from it market wide”.

The filing went on to add that because Apple uses technological and contractual restraints, which include hardware-enforced App Store exclusivity and contractual limitations on web browser technology, it is “able to (and does) extract the same agreement from any new iOS Peer-to-Peer Payment product as a condition for entry”.

Due to the contested issues, which the complainants claim violate the Sherman Antitrust Act, they are seeking to recover treble damages, interest, costs of suit, equitable relief, and reasonable attorneys’ fees for their damages resulting from Apple’s anticompetitive agreements.

The lawsuit is the latest claim to allege Apple is engaged in anticompetitive practices.

A US judge recently refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Apple alleging it unlawfully monopolises the market for tap-and-pay mobile wallets.

Filed in 2022, the lawsuit from Affinity Credit Union, GreenState Credit Union, and Consumers Co-Op Credit Union centres on claims that Apple limits access to the utilisation of the NFC chips used to make payments through its mobile devices to Apple Pay and apps without payment functionality.

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