That being said, I feel the parent’s viewpoint is naively idealistic, the payment industry is huge with many players and most attempts at new standards or interoperability are by people trying to get a cut of the action, no one is going to adopt a new standard unless they feel they absolutely have to.
ApplePay is pragmatic in that it largely hooks into the existing CC systems and thanks to Apple’s market size they have enough clout to convince people it’s worth the effort.
A whole new standard just for the “general good of the public” will never get any traction without regulation, and in places like the U.S. where bribery is essentially legal (so long as you call it lobbying), any new regulation like this faces an extreme uphill battle to being introduced except where someone standing to make lots of money is behind it.