Other countries had chip cards and contactless payments in widespread use a decade or more before the US even got support for them.
(Then again, I guess a chip reader doesn't stop people from putting in a skimmer that just reads the card number as usual through the magstripe.)
The pump also had a pad for contactless payments, but I couldn't get it to work with either my phone or the NFC chip on my credit card. Maybe it only works with Shell's own card? Wasn't clear.
(And at the complete other end of the spectrum, I then went to top up my tire pressure, only to find that the air pump wanted quarters, and only quarters. Fortunately the attendant turned it on for me for free. I usually don't carry much cash around with me, and even more rarely have coins.)
I'd imagine it would do though, as many chip readers only need you to insert your card far enough to read the chip, which isn't far enough to read the entire magnetic track and thus skim the track (am layman though)
Hoping someone from the industry can comment, but I was under the impression that US issuers were eventually forced into EMV, after dragging their heels, because the US became a prime market for cashing out mag stripe data from non-US issuers.
Not saying that's the case for everyone, but you can't define "customer friendly" in a narrow way that conforms to your personal desires and assume that's that.
Also consider that if banks did have strong authentication around every purchase, there would be less of an incentive for banks or merchants to agree to roll over and eat the cost when there is fraud (and more ammunition for them against laws that require them to). No security/anti-fraud system is perfect, and something will always slip through; I wouldn't want to be a card holder stuck with a big bill because someone managed to clone/swap my SIM (for example) and make transactions using my card if I had no protection from that.