Apple Pay uses hardware secure elements, so the same limitations largely apply.

Google Pay emulates the card on the application processor, so theoretically it could be faster, but I wouldn't be surprised if anything won in terms of more performant RSA cryptography is lost to higher command processing latency between the NFC interface and application processor.

It would be interesting for somebody to do a latency comparison between Apple Pay, Google Pay, and a physical card!

Doesn't Google Pay offload some of the processing to their cloud?

Google Pay only allows a certain number of offline transactions (around three or so, I think) before I'm required to turn off airplane mode and authenticate with their servers.

I believe this also allows it to work with more phones, and get around security and possibly also regulatory requirements, since there's less need for a really secure secure enclave on NFC devices.

> Doesn't Google Pay offload some of the processing to their cloud?

Not on a per transaction basis, or you couldn't make any offline payments (i.e. with your phone being offline; the terminal can usually not be offline for Apple or Google Pay in the way that it can for cards). Latency would probably also be too high/variable.