My wife and I just got back from a two week road trip down between Seattle and Paso Robles. I was shocked at how widely accepted contactless was along the route at gas pumps. Around Seattle, it seems like roughly half of pumps have the readers - the Jacksons operated Shell stations being the largest gap. Of those that offer it, about half don't work with Apple Pay or otherwise fail, even when tapping with the actual card. The closest station to our house with functional contactless is Costco, about 8 miles away.

Every single gasoline transaction on our trip worked successfully with contactless. It didn't matter if it was the tribal station outside Crescent City (where I spotted my first fully-touchscreen Wayne pump in the wild), a random 76 station in wine country, or even local off-brand gas. All of 'em had NFC and every transaction was successful. Really, a very pleasant surprise.

Generally speaking, aside from transactions where the wait staff took our card, I think there was one transaction where we had to dip the chip, and that was at a hotel outside Napa.