Some merchants I've noticed no matter how much you spend still require a signature, which I don't really understand. Others such as Kroger require a signature if it's over $50 but they don't take Apple Pay.

What about contactless cards? I personally find contactless cards, common in the UK, much more convenient than having to faff about with my phone, which may be out of battery.

I find the opposite. My phone is just in my pocket, I pull it out tap the fingerprint scanner and I'm ready. My card is tucked away in my wallet and takes a bit longer.

Admittedly being out of battery is a hard problem, but I chose my phone partly because it has decent battery life.

Two reasons Apple Pay is better than contactless cards. One is security. For purchases over a certain amount, cards make you enter a PIN. This is inconvenient and also susceptible to attack. Apple Pay secures every single transaction with your PIN, made convenient by Touch ID.

Two, if "faffing about" is your concern (thank you for that expression by the way, i'm going to start using it), pulling out a card is not really much different from pulling out a phone. But the Apple Watch supports Apple Pay, and that way you don't have to pull out anything. It's really convenient.

If you're wondering how it works securely with the watch, it's pretty smart. You unlock the watch with a PIN when you put it on. It senses when you've removed it from your wrist, so it just stays unlocked until that point. Therefore all Apple Pay purchases are PIN authorized without having to prompt you for it or a fingerprint. All you have to do is wave your wrist by the terminal and confirm.

Also Apple Pay is always online authorized while contactless cards under a certain amount are often not authorized as a speed hack.

I am in Australia and we have had contactless payments for years. Apple Pay with an iPhone was more trouble than using a card. On the other hand since I got my Apple Watch I haven't carried credit cards with me. It started out as a 1 month experiment to see if I could survive and it has never been a problem.

Phone based payments seem to have really failed to gain momentum here in Australia too; we've had contactless cards for a few years now and they've become the norm, using a phone seems to have marginal benefit over that.

My understanding is that contactless cards have limit of £30 per transaction in the UK. Apple Pay (perhaps it's the same with Android Pay?) has a significantly higher limit.

25 € in Austria. But for higher amounts you can still just hover the card above the terminal and then enter your PIN instead of sticking the card in (at least at some stores).

Interesting. In most stores in Holland my experience is that over a certain amount, or after a certain number of transactions, I get a 'pin required' message. I then have to wait for the cashier to do some voodoo, only then insert my card (before that causes issues), and enter my PIN. This is the case pretty much everywhere.

I love contactless payment, and this occasional complication doesn't cause enough trouble, but it's still really annoying because I'd expect exactly what you describe to be the case.