Apple Pay can be used with touch id on iPads for doing store and online purchases. I think that is why it was asking for the credit card - normally when I'm configuring a new ios version on iPads I skip a lot of the setup (including things like siri).
Thanks for the clarification!
For medical reasons I cannot use Touch-ID, hence have NEVER bothered about any functionality arising from it!!
Still, I've had the iPad-Air2 for some time now (approx 1 yr) & I've obviously upgraded it a few times - however, I certainly DON'T recall ever being "coerced" into signing up for it before!!