Sometimes I leave the house with only my phone. Why carry two things when one thing will do fine for a quick trip? Its my car keys, my credit card, my transit pass, etc.

I've been moving towards using NFC payments for activating gas pumps as those readers still have you fully insert your card exposing the full mag strip.

Its also often faster for me to just tap my phone than to take my wallet out, pull out the specific card I'm wanting to use to pay, tapping/inserting that card, putting that card back, and then putting my wallet back. Instead my phone which still has a touch unlock is already unlocked before I take it out of my pocket and ready to be tapped and then put back in my pocket.

I can't say I relate - for one thing I don't have any of those things on my phone (except payment), but also I don't want them on my phone. We put way too much on them already, imo. But regardless, I always have wallet, phone and keys any time I leave the house. It doesn't really take effort to bring them, and that way I won't need them.

Wonder if this is a nationality thing? In the UK I'd say ~30% of sales are done via phones/watches these days.

That's fascinating to me, because many times I've tried to do that it's an exercise in frustration. Terminals don't always have the sensor in the same spot, phones sometimes don't register the connection, and so on. Maybe things work better in the UK?

It can be a bit difficult, particularly now that some phones are getting more demanding about re-authorising before it will go through. Tap-try to get fingerprint scanner working-tap again is a much less fluid procedure than tap-go.

The position thing is just something you get used to. There's not that many reader models in active use and most of them are pretty good about marking where the nfc reader is these days.

I’m in the US and in the last few years things have flipped to where I’m more surprised when a place doesn’t have tap to pay.

How is that fiddling? Just put the phone to the terminal, that's it. Sometimes press finger to the fingerprint sensor.

For card, you need to get the wallet, get the card from the wallet, and then put it back.

Some people don't use wallet or put it close, because I only need wallet to pay or use loyalty card, and I can do that with my phone.