Playing With Dutch Regulators Regarding Dating Applications, Apple Fined Rp. 80.9 Billion

JAKARTA - Apple seems happy to play with the Dutch regulator. It appears that the company failed to comply with Autoriteit Consumer & Market (ACM) orders to allow dating apps to use non-Apple payments.

ACM disclosed, Apple was fined back 5 million euros, equivalent to Rp. 80.9 billion. The country's antitrust watchdog said the tech giant applied unreasonable conditions to local dating app providers, who wanted to use non-Apple payment technologies in their apps.

"The adjustment conditions that Apple has set for dating app providers are unreasonable and create an unnecessary barrier," ACM said in a statement.

“The new requirement states that if they want to use an alternative payment system, the dating app provider must create a new app from scratch. Apple has notified ACM about this. App providers can't modify their existing apps."

Apple's total fine, including previous penalties for failing to comply with regulatory orders, now stands at 20 million euros.

Reported earlier, ACM ordered Apple to provide local dating apps with the ability to use alternative payment technologies for in-app purchases in August last year, after investigating a number of complaints.

Although enforcement of the order was delayed until last month, after Apple attempted to challenge it in court. Following the decision in December last year, Apple only had an early mid-January deadline to comply with the ACM order.

But here, Apple is often indecisive. Initially obeyed ACM commands the next day, it changed back. Since then, regulators have issued other fines, and are still not satisfied that Apple did not comply with all the requirements.

Launching TechCrunch, Tuesday, February 15, ACM believes that this is an unreasonable condition that goes against the requirements set forth by ACM. Apple still doesn't meet ACM requirements at this time.

Apple's fine on the ACM order could increase further to a maximum of 50 million euros, if the App Store controller continues to drag its feet away from the regulator's demands.

This time, the deadline for Apple to comply is next Monday when regulators will again decide whether or not to hit Apple with another 5 million euros fine.