In the past, I've used that same Visa debit card at Home Depot via Apple Pay with no problems. Didn't work last week, though, and the cashier had no idea why it wouldn't work.
I'm not sure why it would stop working -- I suspect there's a problem in the payment network.
I've run into situations where Apple Pay didn't work, but a contactless card for the same account worked fine. I suspect there's a bug in the merchant's terminal that's somehow corrupting the transaction data and causing the validation to fail on the other end.
But, I've also encountered cases where neither Apple Pay or the contactless card worked, even though the terminal was clearly labeled with the NFC logo, AND terminal accepted the "tap". But, the transaction is denied. In this case, I suspect that the merchant bought an NFC-enabled terminal, but doesn't have NFC payment service from his payment processor. I don't know if it was a oversight, or if they have to pay extra and declined to do so.
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Some? How about almost all of them. And a whole lot of cards don't even have a PIN for unattended terminals, too.
Well, in my anecdotal experience, only "some" have a PIN. Of all of my cards, only one bank has issued me a card with a PIN. The others have no chip PIN at all. I don't know how prevalent the PIN actually is, but I hope US banks introduce them universally. But, we would have to see widespread use of handheld wireless terminals to make a PIN the primary verification.
But, I can tell you that the handful of unattended terminals I used in Europe didn't know how to process a "secondary" PIN. One refused to accept my card and I had to pay cash. The other never asked for a PIN at all.
There are a couple of banks in the US that issue a chip card with a PIN as primary verification. They are in the DC area, and cater to people that do a lot of international travel.