Do try to keep up. When Apple Pay is activated in the UK, you'll be able to use it anywhere you see the NFC payment symbol. If, as you say, a long list of businesses 'have no current plans to deploy bonk to pay services for the iPhone', they must also have zero plans for handling NFC card payments. Which kind of flies in the face of what's actually happening in the UK.
You mention card swipe. Which is shit technology. Any thief can clone a magnetic stripe and use your card. Or they just lift your card and start buying stuff with it.
Apple Pay will require your fingerprint, which is much much harder to clone, in addition to your phone. That does not make it an attractive target for thieves.
The real benefit to the user, since you ask, is that your card information cannot be stolen from the phone, your purchases are authorised by your fingerprint, nobody can look over your shoulder to see you entering a PIN, and there's no magnetic stripe to clone.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
