A couple of times that lack of signature verification tripped up a cashier, they’re obviously used to always needing it with however their terminal was configured, but with Apple Pay the receipt got printed with no signature line and after looking at it funny they’re like, “oh, well here’s you’re receipt I guess you don’t need to sign!”
I'm glad the cashiers in your country took it that well!
I've heard of a few cases of surprised employees getting suspicious or outright hostile in the early Apple Pay days (when it wasn't available to domestic cardholders yet and only tourists would use it)
This might be largely due to a strong culture of cashiers expecting to be handed over your card and them being the ones to insert it into the terminal (which is quite ridiculous – it causes the terminal to be pivoted between cashier and customer twice for each transaction for the mandatory PIN entry).
This is quite frustrating. I used to have a rather low limit for contactless payments. Back then, some terminals would not prompt for a PIN when the limit was exceeded and would simply decline the transaction. Abroad, I had several incidents where a cashier would take my card, see the "contactless" icon on the card and tap the terminal. It was usually difficult to explain with limited English that they needed to insert the card because the limit was exceeded.
I ended up crossing the contactless icon out with a marker.
I got this experience first hand in Boston in 2008ish, "Tap and Go" had been introduced to Australia for what seemed to be years before and the cashier expected me to "pass my card" after I had already tapped to pay.
Fortunately she took my explanation well and wanted me to demo it in front of a co-worker.
