You’ll pardon U.S. merchants for not throwing a parade for Apple Pay. Consumer research reports that came out in advance of the holiday season said that as many as a third of survey respondents indicated they’d like to use some form of mobile payment for their shopping this year. And a new study by Retale has stated that 56 percent (!) of people want to use mobile payments this shopping season. But the majority of the available mobile payment technologies use near-field communications (NFC), which would only let those people pay at 3 percent of the places they shop, researchers say. I’ve been using Apple Pay for a few weeks now, and while I enjoy how well it works from a technological standpoint I can’t help but wonder what merchants are getting out of the deal.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/01/apple-pay-big-questions-remain-about-what-u-s-merchants-get-out-it/