Apple doesn't legally deserve a privileged position there, because they are legally equal to any other payment processor that wants to be the "only one". Apple has no more right to be the "only one" than a competitor does.

Their spite fee for alternative payment processors being almost equal to their own payment processor fee, though, kinda shows their goal is just money anyways.

Having said that, I don't think figuring out how to use Apple Pay and Paypal is that hard. My friends use all kinds of payment processors.

My comment isn't addressing whether they deserve anything or whether this arrangement is beneficial overall - I'm only recognizing that it's easier to deal with a single supplier rather than a multitude of them.