Apple Asks Judge to Dismiss Fintiv’s Racketeering Lawsuit Focused on Apple Pay

Apple reportedly asked a judge Monday (Oct. 27) to dismiss a racketeering lawsuit brought by Fintiv.

FinTiv, a digital payments solution provider, alleges the tech giant stole its technology to create the mobile wallet Apple Pay and engaged in racketeering by using Apple Pay to generate fees for credit card issuers, Reuters reported Tuesday (Oct. 28).

Apple said in its filing that Fintiv waited too long to pursue most of its claims and that the company failed to show a pattern of racketeering, the report said.

In the same filing, Apple said that if the case is not dismissed, it should be transferred to a Texas judge who heard a related patent case filed by Fintiv and is already familiar with the facts in the case, according to the report.

The Texas judge dismissed Fintiv’s patent case on Aug. 4, and Fintiv is appealing that decision, per the report.

Fintiv filed a lawsuit against Apple Pay and PayPal in 2022, alleging patent infringement.

The company also filed a lawsuit against Walmart, alleging that the retail giant used trade secrets inappropriately and infringed on the same payment patent as PayPal, specifically, using phone technology to process payments.

Fintiv’s predecessor company, Mozido, founded a phone-based payment remittance business with Western Union and RadioShack in early 2008.

In August, Fintiv filed a new federal suit over the technology that powers Apple Pay, accusing the company of racketeering and trade-secret theft.

The complaint alleges that Apple posed as a prospective partner a decade ago to gain inside access to CorFire’s (now Fintiv’s) mobile wallet platform.

It alleges that between 2011 and 2012, Apple engineers sat through multiple technical sessions protected by nondisclosure agreements, only to hire key CorFire personnel and roll the stolen know-how into the 2014 launch of Apple Pay.

The filing claims Apple’s secure element design, NFC implementation and trusted service management layer are copies of Fintiv’s proprietary architecture.

That case was filed days after a judge dismissed Fintiv’s related patent infringement lawsuit against Apple after rejecting some of Fintiv’s claims.

Fintiv said at the time that it planned to “appeal on the existing record,” Reuters reported.