I've been using cards nearly exclusively my entire adult life, and I can only think of one time that my card had an issue, and it turned out my whole bank was down for ~1 hour. Inconvenient, but I can think of more times I've forgotten to have enough cash with me, and I barely use cash at all now.

In the UK and Australia where I normally am, card infrastructure is just so entirely universal and reliable that it's not even worth considering.