That's exactly what I predicted for NFC when Apple announced Apple Pay. Apple kept developers from using any of the NFC APIs until they were ready to roll out Apple Pay, and then only allowed non-payment NFC after that. It gave them 10 years to establish Apple Pay.
Being the system default was obviously very convenient for customers and there would be a very high bar for any other payment app to compete, but Apple wanted to make absolutely sure there was no possible competition.
Being the system default was obviously very convenient for customers and there would be a very high bar for any other payment app to compete, but Apple wanted to make absolutely sure there was no possible competition.