Swiss banks face mobile payments boycott investigation

Switzerland’s competition watchdog has raided the offices of financial companies, including Credit Suisse and UBS, to investigate a suspected boycott of mobile payment solutions such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. The competition authority said it was investigating whether the banks, including state-owned PostFinance, colluded with local payments providers not to use the mobile payment systems of the big tech companies. UBS acknowledged the investigation and said it had tried to reach an agreement with Apple Pay over use of the Swiss bank’s credit cards as early as 2016, but had not managed to come to an understanding with the company.