This is an overall win for the status quo of the payments ecosystem. Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, Verifone, banks and consumers win. Merchants? PayPal, Google, Square and many other startups are facing an even steeper climb. Apple including NFC may require merchants finally adopt NFC equipped terminals. However, NFC gap at POS may take years to approach ubiquity.

I wonder if Apple is going to introduce Apple NFC Dongle? Apple is apparently sticking to the hardware game for revenues. It has positioned itself as the simple, secure and fast way to pay using your phone. Card-linked offers remain intact for issuers and merchants. Seems like BLE payments using older phones will not happen to induce iPhone 6, 6+ phone sales. There are many more things that Apple can act on to enhance payments offering, but Apple traditionally does a slow roll out of services. I'm interested to see what Apple may introduce in November at Money2020.