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Comment by cwe | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I've had the complete opposite experience. In most/all stores I deal with regularly, you can swipe your card at any time while they're scanning your stuff. You can do the same thing with the watch. I've been able to get away with using it in countries where it wasn't officially supported yet, as well, since it's just NFC and no one has explicitly blocked Apple Pay there (sadly not the same in the US). Results may vary.

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My experience mirrors your own. It's really convenient in stores where you have to swipe your own card rather than hand your card to the cashier. Apple Pay on the watch is better than the phone too.

And I've picked Walgreens over CVS several times because of Apple Pay.

Thirded. The hard part of Apple Pay is figuring out whether you can use it. The NFC icon isn't always obvious. When in doubt, I don't try. But when I do try, it's fast and easy. I just wait until the terminal shows my total, then I hold my phone up and it goes through. It's not a game-changer or anything, but it's a nice convenience.

(One exception to the above: Home Depot had terminals that claimed to do NFC but would hang for a while and eventually time out and error if I tried Apple Pay. That was annoying.)

In the US a lot of terminals that technically could support Apple Pay because they use NFC (and have the logo you mention) have explicitly disabled Apple Pay support. So the scanner 'sees' the watch and kinda starts the transaction, then fails later because it's "not supported yet". Because they have a vested interest in a competing product.

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