My professionally-uninformed take is that preferencing themselves for 'security' concerns would run afoul of the legislative intent. Preferencing themselves as 'the secure option' among their competitors also seems unfair. Maybe a competing payment system is more secure than them.

If Apple (let's also call them "Payment-System-A", to illustrate how the dual role causes issues here) has a special way to communicate to the user that they have this Payment-System-A-Verified-Secure-Link, then Payment-System-B should have an equal, special way to communicate to the user that they have this Payment-System-B-Verified-Secure-Link. Maybe Payment-System-B even Verifies better than Payment-System-A!

Since the legislative intent seems to be that Apple shouldn't be preferencing Payment-System-A on their platform, doing _literally that_ seems to go against the legislative intent. Let Payment-System-A and Payment-System-B compete as equals on the platform, and users can decide for themselves which Payment-System is more Secure or Verified.