One of the things that drives me nuts is that Chip-and-PIN drove all the Canadian retailers to buying fancy new payment terminals that are NFC-enabled -- but Google Wallet NFC isn't available in Canada.
Whereas down here in the states we're lucky if Walgreens, McDonald's, and Old Navy will take NFC payments.
Tapping to pay with credit cards that support PayPass is still pretty hit and miss in Canada. A rough survey of people I know who've used it puts it's success rate at around 50%. The cashier often shrugs and says, "yeah it hasn't worked for a while," or "I've never actually seen anyone try to use that." I've just given up. Most people seem to prefer the security of being forced to enter a PIN over the small gain in convenience. From a messaging perspective it was pretty confusing for credit card companies to introduce two replacements for magstripe+signature at the same time, one with way more security, and another with almost none.
That seems to be how a lot of NFC implementations in the US have gone too. My understanding is that people gave up on trying to line their phones up correctly on the NFC parking meters installed around SF. I would love to know if that's not true.
Whereas down here in the states we're lucky if Walgreens, McDonald's, and Old Navy will take NFC payments.