Market changes - POS credit card machines were scheduled to be phased out in favor of chips and NFC by EOY2015 [1].<p>Apple Pay didn&#x27;t come out of the blue. The impending POS infrastructure change created the opportunity to launch a better payments user experience in the 2014-2015 timeframe. Apple knew this, and developed&#x2F;acquired&#x2F;refined a better security method (touchID + tokenization) and corresponding user experience to negotiate on favorable terms with banks and merchants, which sealed the deal for many and created momentum toward getting stragglers onboard and reaching broad market penetration.<p>Just adding an NFC chip and calling it a day changes nothing. Few markets are penetrated by hardware - or even hardware and software - alone.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&#x2F;corporate-intelligence&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;06&#x2F;october-2015-the-end-of-the-swipe-and-sign-credit-card&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&#x2F;corporate-intelligence&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;06&#x2F;octob...</a>