The difference is only in having to insert the card into the terminal, which maybe doesn't sound like a big deal but a lot of stores put themselves in a stupid position where they have a small contactless terminal(with a pin pad!) attached in a way where it's easy to access next to the till, but if you spend more than £100 the cashier then has to dig out another terminal from under their station that has a slot. It's like trying to pay with a magnetic slot-only card all over again - maybe it's not a big deal but it adds friction where it doesn't need to exist, in France, Germany, Poland, Spain(I assume in all of EU at this point) you just tap your card no matter the transaction value, type in your pin if needed and that's it.