I see some core team on this thread, so just wanted to say THANK YOU! Awesome job! Keep fighting for the users!
I'm totally the wrong person to offer recommendations on mobile, but so far it works very well for me, but then, I use almost no third party apps, and none of them are Play store only. My only complaint is the hardware (outside of their control).
What kind of issues did you have? I think it does require google play services (which can be installed easily).
I have used GOS on a pixel 6 for the past two years with no issues. The phone finally died on me last weekend, so I'm in the market for a new pixel which will be getting GOS right away.
NFC payments are through Google pay / wallet, which is unsupported.