I got a number of responses to my piece on Apple adding a "tap to pay" feature to the iPhone, suggesting that this was a niche thing that Apple shouldn't be doing, and even that it's too niche to even ship. All the context I'll add is that if this is too niche, then I'm not sure why they've been doing tap-to-pay with Apple Pay since 2015. Every Apple Pay user could use this rumored features, as could every Google Pay user, and every contactless card holder.

I don't know if this feature will actually ship, but I expect it will, and I expect it will be an Apple Pay feature that third party apps can use.