You can use NFC pretty much everywhere, too. But, as I said, there is a competing payment method in Switzerland backed by large banks and retailers. They don't want Apple Pay to succeed as it would be more expensive for merchants and banks. Hence, retailers don't promote Apple Pay, and most banks don't have any plans to implement it for their credit cards.
Not yet NFC-equipped, most gas stations (excluding Coop), Manor/Manora, Tchibo, parking meters, vending machines, Post Office, and numerous small chain stores or sole proprietorships not on the Sixt payment network. Good news is that by 2020, but in practice much sooner, all POS terminals are required to be NFC equipped.
As noted elsewhere, the big 5 banks, Post Finance, and a number of large merchants are going all out to c0ckblock any payment system built on credit cards (as retailers see this as a way to avoid credit card fees and reduce the aggregate cost of non-cash transactions, while Sixt and the banks see this as a way preserve (or increase) non-cash fees by capturing what previously went to the card networks.
Since the cartel behind Twint is composed of the leading payments processor (Sixt with 60% CH market share), the leading Swiss banks, the CH post office and finance arm, and the biggest supermarket chains Coop and Migros (even the Swiss Amex outlet is controlled by AECS a Credit Swiss subsidiary), and the card issuers among them (form a virtual monopoly responsible for the issuance of nearly all CH credit cards) are not easily going to allow their cards to participate in Apple Pay, I think Apple Pay will have a harder time gaining traction in Switzerland than elsewhere.
Note that banks in Switzerland are expensive (fee geil) and not particularly customer oriented. (Credit Swiss just launched a fiddly "open the app and optically scan a QR code" system of ATM authentication instead of scrapping it for a more modern, quicker and safer NFC based solution.)
I've been quite happily using Apple Pay here (in CH) since 12/14 and since 6/15 exclusively with my Apple Watch (with my USA based credit card) and I feel sorry that my Swiss neighbors are being deprived of the choice to use the safest and quickest payment system available and are instead being dictated to use a 2nd rate solution bolted into the existing NFC network, by a cartel composed of by oligopolistic players in payments, finance and retail.
[doublepost=1467893856][/doublepost]It's also interesting to note Apple's switching on their Swiss Apple Pay was a server-side change apparently requiring no update to iOS to activate. (I was guessing we would have to wait for the forthcoming iOS point update but was wrong.)
