That’s exclusive to iOS/iPad OS. There aren’t any such restrictions on macOS.

Google Wallet didn’t work last time I checked, but contactless payments worked perfectly well by setting my banking app as the payment app.

Not all banking apps work due to the system integrity checks they do. Support for your banking app can probably be confirmed here.

That doesn’t account for the fact that a picture is equal to 1000 words.

While I agree with most of what you said (about Google and Samsung), Apple is pretty clearly encouraging the stigma when it comes to iMessage. They wouldn’t outright tell people to bully, but they are doing as much in an underhanded way.

• Tim Cook says the solution[1] to the issues is to have the people you are talking to change to an iPhone. Hard to see this as anything other than encouraging, or at least accepting bullying.
• Messages in iMessage used to be green, but when the blue messages were introduced, they changed the green ones to make them less readable and break their own guidelines[2]. There is no good reason to do this other than to encourage upset at green messages.
• The Epic vs Apple lawsuit made information public[3] that Apple purposefully doesn’t make iMessage cross-platform in order to lock users in.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2022/09/07/tim-cook-explains-why-apple-refuses-to-adopt-rcs-buy-your-mom-an-iphone/

[2] https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343

[3] https://www.thurrott.com/apple/248931/apple-didnt-bring-imessage-to-android-because-of-its-lock-in-strategy