What the CMA Actually Proposed
On 30 June 2026, the Competition and Markets Authority opened two conduct-requirement consultations against Apple and Google under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act). The first would force both platforms to let developers "steer" users toward payment options outside their app stores — something Apple currently bans in the UK and Google restricts. The second, aimed only at Apple, would require it to open iOS's near-field communication (NFC) chip to third-party developers, enabling rival contactless-payment apps, digital IDs, and even car keys to run without going through Apple Wallet. Developers have until 28 July 2026 to comment on steering and until 21 July 2026 on NFC access.
This follows the CMA's designation of both companies as having Strategic Market Status (SMS) in mobile platforms on 22 October 2025 — a market-power finding under the DMCC Act, not a ruling of illegal conduct — which unlocked the CMA's power to impose bespoke conduct requirements (gov.uk case page). In February 2026, Apple and Google had already offered voluntary commitments on app review fairness and ranking transparency, formalised by the CMA on 1 April 2026. The steering and NFC consultations are the first time the CMA has moved from accepting voluntary commitments to actively drafting requirements it could impose unilaterally.
The Case For Intervention
The steelman here is straightforward and, on the numbers, not unreasonable. Apple's outright ban on steering — telling users a subscription is cheaper on the web — has no analogue in most retail markets; a supermarket cannot forbid a supplier from mentioning its own website. CMA digital markets director Will Hayter framed the goal as giving "both app developers and users more choice about how they communicate and how they transact" (UKTN). And the market has already shown commissions can fall without collapsing: Google's March 2026 settlement with Epic Games cut its standard Play Store service fee to 20% on new installs and 10% on renewals for UK, US and EEA transactions, down from the long-standing 30% baseline (TechCrunch). If a court settlement can move commissions, a regulator plausibly can too — and NFC in particular looks like a genuine platform-gatekeeping problem, since UK fintechs cannot build a competing tap-to-pay product on iOS at all today, regardless of price.
Where the CMA's Approach Gets Risky
The steering proposal's central mechanism — a "robust, evidence-led framework involving due reference to both cost and value" — is not a rule, it's a promise to write one later. No numerical benchmark, formula, or cap has been published; the CMA has said only that steering fees should be "lower than current app store charges," without specifying by how much or over what timeframe. That is a meaningful gap for a global app economy in which the UK is a mid-sized but non-trivial market. Firms cannot price against a standard that doesn't yet exist, and a regulator that reserves discretion to judge "value" after the fact creates the kind of open-ended liability that chills investment more than a clear, even aggressive, hard cap would.
Apple's stated objection — that steering exposes users to "scams, bait-and-switch tactics, and circumvention of parental controls" — deserves more than a dismissal (MacRumors). Off-platform payment flows genuinely do forfeit App Store/Play Store refund mechanisms and fraud monitoring, and the CMA's own suggested fix — an "official payment partner programme" with vetted providers — is sound in principle but adds yet another layer of CMA-administered gatekeeping to replace the one being dismantled. Regulators should be honest that steering trades one set of consumer protections for another, not treat the security argument as pure platform cover.
The NFC case is the stronger of the two, precisely because it targets an outright technical lockout rather than a pricing dispute — the CMA should prioritise it and move faster there than on steering fee formulas that invite years of dispute (as the EU's Digital Markets Act enforcement against Apple's own steering terms has already shown, running past two years without full resolution). A useful discipline for the CMA: publish the numeric fee ceiling before finalising the requirement, not after. Firms respond to bright lines; they litigate against vague standards.
The Practical Test
Because SMS designation is not itself an abuse finding, the CMA is deliberately choosing a lighter evidentiary bar than the European Commission used against Apple under the Digital Markets Act. That is defensible as a matter of process speed — but it raises the burden on the CMA to show its remedies are genuinely proportionate, not simply because they were achievable to impose. Two consultations closing three weeks apart, on a framework that leaves the actual price cap to a future determination, is not yet proof of proportionate regulation. It is proof of intent. Whether the UK ends up with a workable app-payments market or a slow-motion transatlantic replay of the EU's DMA disputes will be decided by what number the CMA eventually writes down — and how soon.