Sure, I totally agree that Google Wallet was basically a business failure.
I'd also say that the only thing that may stop Apple Pay from being a business failure is that it's Apple doing it this time (even tho, frankly, their UI looks significantly worse than Google Wallet, and has far less functionality, and Google Wallet is no longer impeded by the carriers)...
But that's not what the article section i quoted was talking about. It just made an unqualified claim "this is the first time an OS maker has made a payments product for the physical world"
that's the payment experience, sure, but there's all those moments before and after your payment. say, adding a card, managing which cards you want to use at which locations, etc. there was plenty of footage in the live stream this morning, or stills here: http://www.apple.com/apple-pay/
but the bigger point: you're quibbling over the first of three points i made in an aside (the other two being that google wallet has way more features, and that google wallet is now not blocked from being on Verizon et al). The larger point is that the article saying that this is the first OS to have a payments solution is... very strange.
Well, there's the second half of that sentence which qualifies it with "broad, inclusive". I'm not saying I agree, although it could be that Apple believes Google Wallet was not broad, inclusive, or both.
Android is a popular operating system. Android made payments a platform service. Therefore, that sentence is blatantly false.