I had a similar experience. After it was released in the US, I took a trip to the Netherlands. I had a lot of “how did you do that?” reactions from merchants when I paid for things with my phone.
Depends on country, and how contactless cards being the norm in many places meant there was less push among people for payment with phones, compared to USA where it seems it no modern bits for card payments happened between introduction of magnetic strip and phone-based EMV2 NFC payments.
I remember changing card ~2012, in Poland, because my ancient Visa Electron with magstripe-only was confusing to new cashiers who thought lack of chip meant it's contactless. Around that time phone-based "cards" were also widely promoted though the tech wasn't exactly ready yet so you needed cooperation between banks and telcos to provide secure element.
I had the same experience as you on a trip to the Netherlands. Ironically, the only place where it didn't work was the Apple store in Amsterdam. I don't know if that was an actual technical limitation, or they were aware that it was not yet available in the Netherlands and so didn't even let me try with my phone and its US credit card.
