Here in the U.S. alot of us are counting on the merchants getting new readers this fall to bring us widespread NFC (as the transition to Chip cards finally starts here) and I think most people are just assuming they will come with NFC terminals...
But the new readers all having NFC isn't a pre-ordained outcome - they could just as easily not have NFC functionality included (as the Walmart group payment system doesn't use NFC and that group would probably pay terminal makers and/or merchants to not have NFC on their terminals).
The actual places you can use it at is intermittent enough that my guess is most people won't bother with Apple Pay after trying it out a few times (I still do, but I doubt most would).