I don’t recognize the pattern you describe. For various reasons I’ve done a lot of travel over the last month or so - 2 “old money” European countries, a “new money” European country, a Middle Eastern country and Australia and I didn’t use cash or have to sign anything once in 5 or 6 weeks - I paid for everything with a contactless card. Unless something has dramatically changed in the last 2 years, my experience in the USA during my last trip there was that of a payments system that seemed stuck in the 1970s. In my experience, the global division would be between the USA and the rest of the world.