"What's the big advantage of swiping a phone?"
do you remember when cars had to be manually opened and started with metal keys?
can you think of going back to NOT using your radio-controlled key-fob to open your car with central-locking ?
NFC payments are the death-knell of physical money. it's the future happening right now for e-commerce and you're too blind to understand the significance of the financial-age you live in.
NFC is going to be everywhere before you even know it, it is already in security, finance, tracking, etc and you will one day, very soon, wonder what it was like when you had to carry money around in paper and metal coins around your body.
just as you probably at present can't imagine what it was like WITHOUT credit/debit cards and you only had physical money before the internet-age for shopping with Paypal, etc.
seems you've become very accustomed to your current technology comforts, and are either too young and naive to know or remember a past without them, or maybe you're just myopic and can't see potential ion anything like NFC.