Yeah, I've lived in Australia all my life and for the past couple of years I've used my phone to pay for everything...even transport[1]. People don't look twice if you use contactless payments

[1] https://transportnsw.info/tickets-opal/opal/contactless-paym...

If it was a tourist spot, it may have been surprising for someone with an American accent not needing a PIN.

to be clear, they were surprised that a chip reader worked WITHOUT a pin. and that I couldn't contactless. Everyone was saying "tap here" when I walked up to pay. "no tap". Pretty much every purchase.

They didn't know all the bells and whistles on their machine. It'd be about as surprising as if I whipped out a personal check and they found their machine had a reader for that.

Which would imply that the waiter is in fact quite savvy since they understand the intricacies of credit card authorisations for different countries.

Not particularly, anyone here who deals with sales for any amount of Americans will quickly see that they're the odd one out with contactless.

It's not that there's heaps of different scenarios, it's that there's America and the rest of the world.

Melbourne: 9 days (near chinatown, the G, The Espy) Sydney: 9 days (Circle Quay, Barangaroo, Blue Mountains) Cairns, Airlie Beach, Yeppoon, Hervey Bay, Brisbane (2-3 days each).

I'm American, my card doesn't do contactless, nor chip and pin. I also used old straight swipe cards while there for fun.

I used cards for most purchases except at the melbourne market and a few other places where cash was required.

Ah. I must have misunderstood your point, that they were stunned at just how anachronistic American payment tech is.

that and that their machine supported it.