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In response to your comment Melvin, the article on ATM usage remaining strong made it quite clear that the increase in usage was being driven by developing markets while "in more mature markets, however, ATM usage levels are stagnating or even declining".
I don't think there is a contradiction here. 

Also, not to be overlooked is that a SmartPhone card emulation offers numerous ways to carry out cardholder verification that an NFC-enabled card does not.  This offers the opportunity to remove limits on NFC transactions.

Because offline PIN is standard practice in Europe, there is no cardholder verification for an NFC-enabled card transaction, so transactions were typically limited to €20.  SmartPhones offer the opportunity to avoid this limitation.