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With 66 millions contactless cards by MasterCard and tens of millions more by Visa, contactless payments are possible all around the world. Although the technology is well distributed in certain parts of the world, actual transaction volumes have been low.
Two main reasons are responsible for that:

On the consumer side there is a lack of knowledge about the technology. People might have cards equipped with wireless possibilities without knowing what to do with them. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and card issuers, mainly banks, to educate the customer about the new options on their bank cards.

On the side of the retailers the infrastructure is not always present. Although there are contactless readers in the market, it requires an extra investment. One that does not always weigh up against the gained benefits from adding contactless payments.
One partial solution is to create cheaper add-ons for existing terminals. These are said to be in the making but are not available yet.