The primary reason being it is "trending"?

I havent carried a purse in years. I love it.

Your debit card leaves a trace that can be exploited. Google pay and Apple Pay issue a token that cannot be traced back to your account, and that token is what you see on your receipt and what the merchant sees.

I always have to have my phone with me anyway, so I use it for convenience sake. But I prefer cash most of all, I just don't like having a wallet or bag if I don't have to

From the company perspective: monitoring your transactions, to accumulate even more data about you. It's Google we're speaking of. They get hard thinking of Paypal and that they could do that too.

From the user perspective: you don't need to carry around your wallet to make payments. Only time it would've been useful is when I go to the beach, or other places where I'm hardly bringing anything but the phone with me, like when you go running/cycling/hiking/doing sports and want to be light.

I still don’t even know what Apple Pay is and what it is