> The opportunities for sophisticated marketing based on purchase history are pretty slim.
Not really? Apple sells ads and directly profits from recommending high-margin, exploitative apps on the App Store. Seeing as their 30% cut is a multi-billion dollar market, I wouldn't just call it a "slim opportunity". More like "a better way to optimize the money printer without the SEC shouting at us" or something.
I think it was clear from the beginning of Apple Pay that they’re running a very long term embrace-extend-extinguish on Visa and Mastercard, and everything in their product roadmap to date has been consistent with that, especially opening up native tap-to-pay acceptance on iPhones.