How is your experience with the reliability? I was recently up in Edmonton and anecdotally it seemed like people had serious issues with the NFC payment methods. Several times I saw people attempt to pay via NFC, try 5 times, then eventually pay via insertion+PIN. Looked profoundly frustrating.

Here (Austria) that's mostly because some people have cards without PayPass and they are not aware that they need new cards for it. I never had problems with it and always use it (even for transactions > 25 EUR) in which case it prompts for the PIN. It's super convenient and much faster.