I'd argue 0.15% is a huge cut for the service they're offering. With Apple Pay the payment is still being processed by the card scheme, the merchant's acquirer,

I'd argue 0.15% is a huge cut for the service they're offering. With Apple Pay the payment is still being processed by the card scheme, the merchant's acquirer, their bank and the user's bank. Each of these charge fees and Apple's cut likely comes out of the user's bank's cut, since they are the ones co-operating with Apple to get their cards onto Apple Pay. In the EU, this fee called interchange fee is limited to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Imagine if Apple managed to negotiate for 50-75% of that. That would be ludicrous in my eyes.