Matt Richman:

With Apple Pay, Apple leveraged its business model, cultural influence, and customer base to enter arguably the most heavily-regulated international system on Earth in a way that everyone already in the system had a reason to like. This is an incredible accomplishment, and no other company could have done it.

Matt makes a great point, one often made by many others, that Apple will and can succeed because of its tight control and integration of both hardware and software.