Originally Posted by
brillb
You're misunderstanding the order in which the technologies came in to existence. Apple Pay (and Android Pay, and NFC Samsung Pay) are phone-based implementations of contactless. Cards came first, phones came later - we just didn't get them here in the USA.
Contactless (NFC) payments are ISO/IEC 14443 protocol defined by EMVCo:
http://www.emvco.com/specifications.aspx?id=21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_smart_card
The physical cards with contactless chips in them have been around for more than a decade. At some point, the phone manufacturers realized they could put a chip in the phone that did the same thing as the chip in the plastic cards, with the added security of a PIN or fingerprint scan before the chip activates itself.
I remember having a contactless-capable old Blue Cash card back in 2007 or so, actually. Of course, the novelty kinda wore off after the second or third time I tried using it at CVS--mainly because it was the only place around me that had the necessary readers. (And that doesn't get into their current--possibly undeserved--reputation for poor security that caused issuers to make them only available on an opt-in basis. Assuming they bothered having them at all.)