BLE is a superior radio protocol compared to NFC on almost every axis, with the only exception of battery; having a higher range is a feature, since you can est

BLE is a superior radio protocol compared to NFC on almost every axis, with the only exception of battery; having a higher range is a feature, since you can estimate the range with a decent precision. It's safe to assume that Apple was forced to add NFC for compatibility with the existent contactless POS (especially in Europe, where they've got a widespread adoption already). The same applies for the Secure Element, which is a functional duplicate of the Secure Enclave, but runs Java Card and was probably required by CC networks to reuse existing infrastructure.