I have a feeling on the terminal side, it looks just like like a plastic card with PayPass.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-03/isis-mobile-wallet-...
I live in a country where banks tend to come up with similar payment technologies at the same time; one example is the Chipknip vs Chipper, both bank card technologies for putting pre-paid amounts of cash on the card to be used to pay without having to enter a PIN or the longish time it took for a regular card payment to process. Didn't take long for the payment terminals to support both platforms.
ATM we've got a similar fight going on; a few banks have contactless payments now, but one bank is going for NFC payments via (very specific models of) smartphones (Samsung Galaxy models; I gathered they're using an already deprecated API/technology for that). But the same argument applies; both technologies use NFC, so all it needs to work is a firmware upgrade.
I've had NFC on Android phones for almost 2 years now, but I've still never been able to use it in the UK. We have some contactless payment terminals now, but the only services that allow you to use NFC payments on your phone here are tied to specific banks/carriers, or only work on specific phones.
I'm hoping that Apple Pay will push more merchants and services to start accepting NFC payments in general.