THROUGH THE ACTUAL CARD READER SO THEY DIDN’T NEED GOOGLE/APPLE/SAMSUNG WALLET WHATEVER THE FUCK

That’s not an issue, I’m assuming you mean the establishment didn’t need it, but just to cover my bases I’ll give you both scenarios:

• either you’re talking about your phone needing an app, which was still the case for the magnetic card thing, but I doubt you were talking about this.
• or more likely, you are talking about the place you’re paying needing a new PoS for receiving NFC based payment. In this case the issue is from the retailers trying to get another cut of the money by making you go through their app, when they can receive that payment via tap to pay which is also a thing on new cards, I have used them both in my country without any issue because we don’t have those ass backwards retailers, there’s an issue of the person taking payment being unaware and trying to enable another mobile based payment method instead of just setting it to card based payment.