I can guarantee the second sentence
Until a couple years ago I owned a business with a merchant account, and looked into this when it became able to accept NFC transactions. The banks eat Apple's 0.15% fee.
There are different rates for different cards (i.e. Amex transactions cost you more than Visa/MC do, which is why mostly only those places that get a lot of business travel or 1%ers are willing to accept Amex) but there is no difference in merchant fees for using the same card depending on whether Apple Pay was used or not.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
