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@Anon: 

I forgot to mention that none of the cards on iTunes are issued by Apple.

According to this post on Finextra (https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=9932), there could be a solid business case for banks to share some of their interchange with Apple while supporting Apple Pay. Therefore, there needn't be any form of intimidation involved if they've decided to do so.

Makes a lot of sense. I now see a solid business case for banks to share some of their interchange with Apple while supporting Apple Pay. And I can update my comment on my post (https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=9924) as to why banks needn't be "intimidated" into doing so, as some have suggested.

All good questions although I won't ask if "Card is God!" Thanks to the friction caused by 2FA, Mobile OTP and PIN for CNP / CP transactions, I've already moved on from "Card to COD"!

@Anon:

TY for your comment. Considering that Apple is not a bank and Apple Pay is not a credit card, I don't see how Apple can tell banks, "your customers would choose Apple over you". Put simply, without Apple Pay, my credit card will continue to work everywhere as before. Without my credit card, Apple Pay won't even begin to work anywhere.

That said, aggregators / intermediaries use a strategy that warrants notice: Sign up 2-3 marquee companies (say Bank A, Bank B and Bank C) to their service, even without any charges, if it comes to it. Go to other companies in the same industry and arm twist them, "Hey Bank P, Q, R: Sign up for our service at this price or risk losing your business to Banks A, B, C who have already signed up with us." This is an old trick, no matter whether Apple has used it with Apple Pay or not. 

Call a telephone number. Be disconnected after one ring. EUR 5 credited to charity. EUR 5 debited to monthly mobile phone bill. End of story. When I came across this payment method in Germany in 2000, I thought there couldn't be a more convenient way to donate to charity (that also drove impulse donations). 14 years later, my views haven't changed. "Direct Career Billing" for "Charity Donation" was certainly one use case where TELCOs had a huge chance to disintermediate banks. But they still haven't, given how, in 2014, we're still reading about two banks vying for honors for being the first to introduce mobile payments for charity donations!

As the latest case of UBER in India illustrates (http://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/aftermarket/uber-in-talks-to-integrate-digital-wallet-in-india/41994881), it’s still difficult to implement a technology that strikes the right tradeoff between CX (as a company known for CX wants it) and security (as the regulator mandates it). Maybe such a technology exists but, for the specific case of iCloud Photo Scandal, can't such a hack be prevented by inserting a CAPTCHA in the “Find My iPhone” service so that (1) Fraudsters won't be able to run “brute force” programs to guess Jennifer Lawrence's iCloud account password (2) If she herself forgets her password, she'd be able to retrieve it with only the friction of cracking the CAPTCHA code? Seems like a simple solution.

Maybe I’m suffering from some drastic case of misunderstanding about this Amazon credit card but, for more than one reason, I fail to see much newsworthy or exciting about it:

1. Retailers have been having cobranded, open-loop, rewards credit cards like this for decades. I remember one from Amazon itself in 2007-8.
2. While exact earn / burn ratios keep changing with time, many of these cards do offer rewards for purchase at their own as well as 3rd party merchants' stores.
3. Although this article says it's  "just launched", I was able to find reviews as old as 2 years naming the Amazon credit card as "The 27th Best Rewards Card".
4. Amazon hasn't suddenly turned into a Bank / Issuer with this card. Therefore, it has access to exactly the same data about its cardholder’s shopping history at, say, WalMart, as WalMart does to a WalMart cobranded cardholder’s shopping history at Amazon.com.

http://www.bankofamerica.co.uk/amazon/

http://pages.ebay.com/creditcard/

https://www.firstbankcard.com/overstock/site/personal/personal.fhtml

http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/amazon-credit-card-review/

If "...stay off the Internet" really means , "...keep your data off the Internet", with smartphone storages regularly exceeding 8GB, why should it be so hard to do that? In any case, a smartphone is supposed to be a personal device, so why would anyone want to store highly personal content on the cloud - rather than locally - in the first place? Is it to indulge in "omnichannel narcissism" - admire one's own nude pics on smartphone, tablet and other devices, for example?

At least some organizations don't have to spend big bucks for branding and corporate identity!

@JimW + 1.