[arfrank]

The industry goes much deeper than that, and there are many vendors that also issue virtual cards via other methods. Checkout Wex & Conferma for a few.

A few big changes are happening on the backend of payments that we also plan on leveraging. See this spec if you want to learn more about them: http://www.emvco.com/specifications.aspx?id=263

[andreyf]

This is a slightly more accessible explanation: http://clover-developers.blogspot.com/2014/09/apple-pay.html