That’s what the tone is for.

I have OP’s problem too. When there’s an icon it’s easy, but some terminals (older ones?) don’t have the icon anywhere but support the functionality so you just have to sort of try to figure out where it is.

It can also be a problem on small terminals. The bigger ones have plenty of room, but sometimes the small ones put it awkwardly on the back where you would never look for it.

The really annoying part is that some terminals beep when the card read is done, while others beep at the start of the read, meaning if you are primed for the first type, you will prematurely take your card away and cause an error, requiring a second attempt.

This gets me every time

I actually find the "Square" based nfc readers to be the best. There's no real feedback because it's just a tiny, watch sized brick that you pass your card anywhere in the vicinity of and it reads it so fast you basically can't screw it up.

Maybe you only go to stores that happen to use a specific brand of reader? About a third of the machines I tap on place the sensor somewhere different from the icon, and the staff just continually tell people to tap some other hidden location like a specific corner or the bottom middle of the screen. (Colorodo and California)