When you are standing in a line of people, and they're all waiting on you, there's a bit of pressure (real or imagined) to not be the one wasting everyone else's time.
Given the option between tapping a card, which Just Works, and fussing with Apple Pay that (in their experience) doesn't, the obvious choice is to not bother with using apple pay.
That's not to say that your perspective isn't informative, but rather that the original complaint likely comes from a place of social stress rather than fractional seconds being the issue.
Imagined. No one is noticing how many seconds it takes you to pay. They notice if the cashier has to call a manager, or if you are using some coupon that doesn’t scan or something that interrupts the normal flow of a transaction. They’re not noticing that you’re taking 20 seconds to find a credit card or unlock your phone.
If they are in a developing country, QR code payments are more likely, which is like take out your phone, open your payment app and take a picture of the code…a lot more complex than Apple Pay or anything related to NFC, but also cheaper since the hardware is really cheap (just normal smart phones).
Given the option between tapping a card, which Just Works, and fussing with Apple Pay that (in their experience) doesn't, the obvious choice is to not bother with using apple pay.
That's not to say that your perspective isn't informative, but rather that the original complaint likely comes from a place of social stress rather than fractional seconds being the issue.