> Apple Pay is just as traceable if they want it to be.

[Citation Needed].

On the other hand, stores like that probably already do facial recognition on customers, so it really is just intransigence to not allow contactless payments.

Apple Pay and Google Pay have their own virtual numbers, rather than using your regular card number, but the number doesn't rotate.

For example, our local bus company can quite happily offer capped daily and weekly fares when folk use the same device to pay.

Your local bus company isn't trying to correlate your activity across multiple retailers to try to squeeze an extra few cents of value from you, though.

The device account number does not rotate with every transaction. You have to unlink your device from your credit account and re-enroll to do that.

See https://birchtree.me/blog/digital-wallets-and-the-only-apple... - the DPAN stays the same at a particular merchant, so Walmart sees all but can't necessarily directly "know" what you're buying at other stores.