America had many many years of accepting credit cards before it was feasible to bring the readers to the table, and by then it was ingrained. My impression is t

America had many many years of accepting credit cards before it was feasible to bring the readers to the table, and by then it was ingrained. My impression is that Europe it was much more common to pay at a counter before wireless card readers came about in the late 90s/early 2000s. It's becoming more common to bring readers to tables in America now, because Visa and MasterCard have realized the security benefits and are encouraging it, but there's literally 50 years of habit.