Have you used FaceID? I was skeptical of it, but within the first day or two I was sold. It’s so seamless, and there are some safe guards. If you’re not looking at the camera with your eyes open, it won’t work. You can also repeatedly mash the lock button to disable it. I haven’t needed to do this, but if I ever see a potential situation coming, I’d likely reach into my pocket and quietly kill FaceID, but I’d want to do the same with TouchID as well.
I’m curious, why would you use your cards over an iPhone with FaceID? The card seems more vulnerable, as anyone could use it (unless you’re in a country where a pin is the norm for credit).
The technical stuff is all fine, and it works as you say (I noticed the "look at screen" requirement myself a while back); my dislike is purely the practical issues, not the technical, as the arrangement of the contactless mechanisms in stores means the camera can either face me or the device can be close enough to the reader to work, but not both. Also, I'm still wearing masks quite often (not 100% of the time as when I bought the SE, but quite often) and for that, Touch works better than Face.
I suppose theoretically I could set up the Wallet on the Apple Watch, but I find the watch to be disappointingly difficult to get on with, again for UX reasons. (On screen buttons are too small and often reject touches entirely, everything is so slow to respond it might as well be going via a random website).
Regarding security, there's inherent (and fairly low) limits to the maximum payment, and cards can be disabled in banking apps if they go missing.
(I'd count your anecdote as "UI team": developer-designer collaboration rather than siloing each speciality).
Similar reasoning even before I stopped being excited.
I've got an SE 3, which makes me aware how many UI teams don't design and/or test for narrower displays.
(But also, the move away from touch ID to face ID feels worse to me; when I do finally replace this phone, I'll likely return to using my actual cards for contactless payments rather than Apple Wallet with face ID).