No one in America uses Apple Pay.

This one was a bit of a shocker. No one uses Apple Pay in America, or even contactless in general. Everyone uses cash — another shocker, I can’t remember the last time I saw a sterling note in the UK — or, if a card, it’s an old swipe-and-sign on an antiquated swipe machine that requires a signature.

On our first night out at the taco joint, I innocently hold up my phone ready to pay.

“Apple Pay?”

The guy looked at me like I had five heads.

“No. We can take a card though.” He was proud of this. “You’ll just have to come with me.”

So I followed him to the sole machine behind the counter back by the kitchens, where he manually swiped my card and I signed for it, with an actual pen, and manually worked out the tip like 101.89 plus [101.89 divided by 100 times 20], carry the three and so on.

In ten days in America, I did more grade school math than in all the intervening years put together.

But I had it easier than Joel. Are you ready for this? Joel had never — not once — paid for anything by swiping his actual card. Ever. His card wasn’t working and we realised it was because the swipe strip had just, you know, never been used before.

In the end, he had to go into the actual app to activate the card swipe strip on his physical card before it would work, as a real card, in the real world, separate from the active little picture of a card in his phone.