One interesting unrelated development: the US is moving to chip-and-PIN cards next year. Merchants that don't move over to the new system (in other words, those that still take signatures instead of having you do the chip-and-PIN thing) will be responsible for fraud that occurs in their stores... so merchants will switch.
If merchants are getting new credit card terminals anyhow, it seems likely they'd get NFC compatible ones.
I noticed that the Whole Foods near me just changed their credit card terminals a couple of weeks ago...
Generally yes, although the cashier might be momentarily confused when the machine prompts her to get a signature since everyone else just uses their pin.
The only place it won't work at all is self-service kiosk.
It ought to, since some European customers have chip-and-signature cards for various reasons. There's no guarantee that shop employees will be properly trained on how to handle it though.
My Bank of America Visa recently expired, and the new one they sent me has what appears to be chip and pin. Weirdly, there is no information in the included pamphlet about the technology. I assume they're just preemptively putting the cards out there.
I have a Bank of America MasterCard that expired recently and they sent me a new card, but when you go to their information page about chip cards ( http://bankofamerica.com/chipcardfacts ) it seems pretty clear that it's actually chip and signature. They emphasize that if you get asked for a PIN, you should tell the merchant it only requires a signature.
I don't know enough about chip and PIN to say if it's possible, but I'm hoping that means they'll eventually move to adding a PIN too.
All that said -- my iPhone 5 is coming off contract in a few weeks now and I definitely plan on picking up an iPhone 6; I'm looking forward to seeing how well Pay works.
Stores are already installing them to conform to the upcoming chip and signature standard rolling out across the US. You can tap most of your credit cards instead of swiping at the small number of merchants that have rolled it out (McDonalds, Staples, etc).
If merchants are getting new credit card terminals anyhow, it seems likely they'd get NFC compatible ones.
I noticed that the Whole Foods near me just changed their credit card terminals a couple of weeks ago...