Originally Posted by tmiw

Visa and Mastercard mandated contactless support in Europe and in my experience, nearly everyone in at least the UK had it as a result. This was two years ago, too (deadline is sometime this year IIRC). "Mandate" doesn't imply government involvement.

Besides, even if it were never mandated here, you have to admit that Apple's marketing department is pretty good if it made merchants think it was going to be big enough to justify buying in. Not even Google was able to get them to back in the Google Wallet days.

According to the Federal Reserve, cash is the majority of purchases only for ones under $10 and a plurality between $10-25. Considering that debit cards are run over Visa or MC a significant part (possibly the majority) of the time here, I wouldn't lump them in with cash.