I went to three different locations:

1. Circle K/Shell Service Station
2. Walgreen's
3. McDonald's

At the Circle K, I held my phone to the pad, thumb resting on the Touch ID, it woke my phone and paid. Took about 1 second. Girl working the cash register says, "Declined." My worst fear. The other girl at the other register says, "Our machines don't work, never have." I take my wallet out, swipe the card that was just declined via NFC, and pay without any problems.

Next stop was Walgreen's. Get my items, enter my rewards number, hold phone up and again my device wakes, reads my finger print and gives me the check mark that everything went well. This time it reads correctly and I am prompted to enter my PIN (card used in Apple Pay is my debit). I was kind of surprised because I thought I had read that pins were no longer needed. At any rate, I enter PIN, approves, all is well. I was slightly disappointed because my expectation was that I would no longer need my PIN, but whatever, it worked.

Final stop at McDonald's was the easiest. Hold my phone up, get the checkmark, and almost immediately the receipt prints. Super fast, and the way I was expecting it to be.

My final thoughts are that I think if you would be prompted to use your PIN when swiping, you're going to be prompted when using Apple Pay. I'm not a frequent McDonald's goer so I don't know if they require a PIN usually.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try holding the device up to the reader without my finger on the home button to see if I can select a different card.

It was fun, cool, techy, and worked alright.