The European Union may bring charges against Apple for antitrust violations after it restricts rivals from accessing Apple Pay, Forbes reports, citing Financial Times’ (FT) sources.

Apple would receive fines worth up to 10 percent of global turnover if the charges are upheld. The company is set to face antitrust charges next week, but the date may still change.

As the newspaper writes, Apple may be accused of unfairly blocking rivals from accessing its mobile payment system that operates on hundreds of millions of iPhone devices. The charges relate to the NFC - or “near field communication” - technology that allows a user to pay by tapping their iPhone on a payments terminal.

NFC-enabled payments have grown in popularity due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters writes. Banks and other financial companies have complained that they would like to implement this functionality in their iPhone apps too, but Apple refuses to give access to NFC.

The European Commission opened the case in 2020. FT notes that the move signals how the EU has become the center of a global regulatory crackdown against Big Tech, with groups such as Google and Facebook having regularly been in the crosshairs of antitrust authorities in recent years.

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