As nice as your Samsung might have been, it's pretty absurd IMO to claim contactless was as prevalent in the USA in 2013 as it was in European countries like say France or the UK. Huge nationwide retailers such as Walmart and Kroger held out adopting practically forever, and there are loads of other examples who haven't adopted or only did so very recently - The Home Depot, Lowes, Starbucks...
I was living in London circa 2010/2011 when some friends from the US came to visit. I recall having to use my card to hire bikes for them (the Barclays/"Boris" bikes) because it required a tap from a chip+pin card to release them from the locks. My US friends had no such cards. Yet they were clearly ubiquitous enough in the UK at the time to make it a hard requirement for getting a bike.
> https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/15/kroger-fred-meyer-apple...