I can provide a little bit of insight into the Google Pay shenanigans, though I didn’t work there or interact with anyone there.

The initial Google Wallet launch irked the card networks because they presented their own proxy card rather than a card that clearly advertised the card issuer and the network. (Oh boy do they care a lot about branding…)

I assume they dropped NFC initially because it was done with the first generation tech that was very insecure and simply transmitted card numbers in the clear. Today’s contactless tech is all EMV based, and also needs to depend on a Secure Enclave chip to be blessed by PCI; that might explain why they cut off support for a number of devices. This happened around the time Apple Pay came into the scene.

The rebranding and all that though, well, that’s Google.