[easytiger]

I think it might be a bit of a misrepresentation. They will have their own 3rd party payment service ala paypal but you will be able to use the card to decide which payment method associated with that account gets used.

Just a guess! but it would avoid some pretty massive technical hurdles to international acceptance.

[praseodym]

As far as the current public information goes, Apple Pay tokenizes your credit/debit card and uses that to pay, which means your bank processes the payment. Apple won't process the payments themselves.