[rswail]

Apple Pay has not very much to do with the Apple card. Apple Pay is a logical extension of contactless, which has been available around the world for years.

The world moved to chip&pin at least 5 years ago and moved to contactless for small money amounts (<AUD100 <GBP30) at least 3-4 years ago.

Apple & Google's changes for CC are mostly in the tokenization standard, building the backends for issuers.

The Apple Card is a US only need, because the US is stuck on chip&sign and Visa/MC have been unable to force the retailers to replace their ancient POS equipment. Plus big retailers don't like not having access to the full PAN of an account and tracking customers.