I find it odd that they're so unreliable in the US given they're neither new nor complicated technology and have a decade of use in Europe before they even started gaining adoption in the US, but I'll take your word for it. I wonder what US card or terminal manufacturers are doing wrong for such a reliability difference

Chip payments occasionally had problems in Europe too. The chips on the cards, or the contacts on the terminals would get dirty or wear out or whatever. Contactless is much more reliable.

That's wild. We've had chips on our cards in Australia for gosh-knows how long at this point, and I honestly cannot remember the last time it failed.

Not that they're even used that often these days either: everything is just tap-and-go NFC payment now.

And I do mean everything!

Remember that the US is huge, diverse, and opinionated, and really struggles to realize "My experience isn't everyone's experience"

I've had the chip struggle like once in my life. That was on a card very near it's expiration date. Most people I see in the store have no problems with their payment method, and when I was a cashier in 2012, people seemed to have significantly more problems getting their magstripes to scan.

All of this is SUPER dependent on which flavor/brand of POS is popular around you, the effort your bank put into making a good implementation, and whether your local merchants actually put effort into running their business and keeping equipment maintained. Pretty much nothing in this discussion is generalizeable to all of the US other than "We were late to the party of chip cards"