Outside of USA, where most people don't have an iPhone, I don't really see the point.. It would be more usefull with ipads or any less personal device :
If the shop's owner haves an iPhone accepting paiement but it's an employee doing the paiements, the shop opwner has to give his personal phone to the employee to accept paiement ? Or he needs to buy an other iPhone with no personal data and accepting paiement (is it even possible ? ) to give the employee ? .. and now it's already more expensive than a simple contactless paiement machine.
Lots of people other than shops take money. There are lots of one-man businesses or tradespeople who take credit card through services like SumUp which require a seperate device paired to their phone. For people like that this will be very useful.
Both my plumber and the guy who fixed our washing machine used SumUp, as did most of the market-stall holders at the Christmas market this year. All of them were using the phone-linked version (rather than the one with its own SIM).
Sure, it's not right for everyone, but it will be perfect for a lot of people.
> Later this year, US merchants will be able to accept Apple Pay and other contactless payments simply by using iPhone and a partner-enabled iOS app
The target user is a US-based merchant. Most likely, it's a small business, perhaps a sole proprietorship, that uses a small Square reader today. This gives that business one more way to accept payments, but without the extra hardware.
A business with multiple employees/points of sale has alternatives. This is probably not the solution for them.
