Why is the Apple credit card receiving so much attention?

There are plenty of examples and articles to cite the benefits, etc. about the Apple credit card. Here are some tangential points to consider:

1. An extremely large user base (600+ million), not sure who else would have such a large user base.
2. Apple, the company has lots of cash. Nothing out there that they cannot buy!
3. Ease into a payment system, that tomorrow can rival the existing card networks and banks (may seem silly right now, given they partnered up with a bank and a card network).
4. Get in on the low hanging fruit which is a mix of old and new, very easy for people to ease into this.
5. Get more merchants to sign up with Apple Pay so that the cash back increases for its customers and merchants are able to sell at a lower MDR)
6. With enough traction, money movement will be instant as both the buyer and the seller would be Apply customers.
7. The monopoly gets dented (Visa/Mastercard), eventually.
8. Apple’s foray into financial services also means at some point in time, APIs to such services will be opened to developers community. That would be big.
9. Micro-payments: Because Apple would control the rails (where the transaction is On-Us, i.e. merchant and customer both using Apple Pay), payments made with Apple Credit can be instant (real-time) and can be micro. So with a touch of a finger, you can pay for a payment wall article for say 32 cents and continue on). This will be huge.
10. Accelerate time to market for other large players thinking about the same (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc.) — which is great for consumers. More choice.