I don't understand people's dislike of NFC. Especially if it's used for charging.
And whatever the method for using it for payments, I'm sure apple (or some jailbreak tweak developer) would come up with a quick and easy solution.
Something on control centre maybe, to activate payment mode.
I currently have a Barclaycard contactless payment sticker on the back of my iPhone. It's much easier than pulling out my wallet, pulling out the card, putting my wallet away or balancing it/other hand, paying, putting card back, putting wallet back, leave.
Now it's just stretch out arm/hand (cos I'm using my phone on the queue anyway), pay, leave.
And there is world outside of the US ;-) contactless payments are growing over here in the UK, with more and more retailers offering contactless. I even saw a Tesco (big supermarket in the Uk) self/fast service machine with a contactless payment symbol.
For that, I want NFC. Also with a fingerprint sensor to make it more secure, that'd be nice.
That said, the comment at WWDC about bumping phones, makes me think apple won't be touching it in the near future calendar (see what I did there, NFC ;-) )