CVS and Rite Aid Officially Disable Apple Pay Support At Stores Nationwide

MacRumors · Oct 27, 2014

Last week, multiple reports indicated that pharmacy chains CVS and Rite Aid were disabling near field communications (NFC) payment terminals at some of their locations in order to stop the use of Apple Pay. Now, The New York Times reports that both drug chains have officially disabled Apple Pay from working at their stores nationwide.

A spokeswoman for Rite Aid said that the company "does not currently accept Apple Pay" and that the company was "still in the process of evaluating mobile payment options." Representatives from CVS did not respond to interview requests from The New York Times. Apple declined to comment on the actions from both stores. However, chief emerging payments officer at MasterCard Ed McLaughlin said that "consumers should have the ability to pay any way they want" and that the company "looks forward to [CVS and Rite Aid] turning on the functionality back on in their stores."

Many believe that Rite Aid's and CVS's moves to disable Apple Pay support is related to their participation in the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), which is a group consisting of other retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, and Gap. MCX is developing its own mobile payment system known as CurrentC, which will be available next year according to a claimed internal Rite Aid message.

Apple Pay launched last week and is accepted at over 200,000 locations in the U.S. Rite Aid and CVS competitor Walgreens has been one of the biggest supporters of Apple Pay, as the feature is available at many of its over 8,000 stores around the United States.

Article Link: CVS and Rite Aid Officially Disable Apple Pay Support At Stores Nationwide

AppleFan115 · Oct 27, 2014

So you don't want to accept money from paying customers?

Ballis · Oct 27, 2014

Not accepting money seems like a poor business decision.
It will be interesting to see how this works out for them.

jon3543 · Oct 27, 2014

Drive away your wealthier customers who can afford an iPhone. Makes perfect sense.

Velin · Oct 27, 2014

Should examine whether this move complies with antitrust laws, banking laws, and the credit card merchant agreements.

Also: Rite Aid sucks.

solipsism · Oct 27, 2014

Velin said:
Should examine whether this move complies with antitrust laws, banking laws, and the credit card merchant agreements.

I don't see why not. There is no legal requirement to use NFC.

Lancer · Oct 27, 2014

So they plan on having their own separate mobile payment option, the whole point of using your smart phone is you don't have to bring anything else.

Looks like a backwards step that will probably backfire now all NFC devices (not only the iPhone6) aren't able to use the service.

This is from a guy not in the US and dying to have other options like this.

juanrp · Oct 27, 2014

World's Dumbest Moments.

Adam2222 · Oct 27, 2014

New York times is reporting on it now? My guess is within a few days they will all re-enable it because it is quickly becoming a national issue and not losing thousands of customers/stopping negative press will become more important than trying to stop competition of their crappy payment system.

I bet the quote will be something like "we were still testing Apple pay for maximum compatability with our nfc system" as if it had nothing to do with their competing product and they had planned to enable Apple pay all along and this whole thing was just a misunderstanding.

flux73 · Oct 27, 2014

Velin said:
Should examine whether this move complies with antitrust laws, banking laws, and the credit card merchant agreements.

Also: Rite Aid sucks.

No need to worry about legalities. The loss of income should be enough punishment. IF the customers do the right thing and take their business elsewhere.

This seems to be an increasing trend. More and more companies seem to feel entitled to get more than just money from the customers. They want their info. And now they want access to their bank accounts. We are slipping down the slippery slope folks.

iapplelove · Oct 27, 2014

I'm pretty ashamed of CVS at the moment. Their corporate headquarters are located in my home state so they are pretty big around here.

And they just got done installing all new POS terminals with NFC readers in pretty much all their stores.

I understand them along with some other major players are moving towards currentc but imo apple pay is just another form of payment no different than swiping s card with some added security for the card owner.

Not good CVS not good at all.

sillypooh · Oct 27, 2014

DuaneReade here I come!

batchtaster · Oct 27, 2014

looks forward to [CVS and Rite Aid] turning on the functionality back on in their stores.

Strikes me as being a veiled threat.

If you must go to CVS or Rite Aid, pay in pennies and dimes. Maybe when you're holding up the queue for several minutes they'll appreciate the worldwide NFC standard. And actually tell them: "I would have paid with my phone in a couple of seconds, but you deliberately turned it off, so this is what you get."

Adam2222 · Oct 27, 2014

batchtaster said:
Strikes me as being a veiled threat.

If you must go to CVS or Rite Aid, pay in pennies and dimes. Maybe when you're holding up the queue for several minutes they'll appreciate the worldwide NFC standard.

All that will do is annoy the 19 year old making $10/hour working the register. Douchey move.

Anakairos · Oct 27, 2014

So, do I understand it right?
If I came to the U.S. und tried to pay with my debit card with NFC it wouldn't work, either?
Really stupid.
(Just in case: yes, I do pay 90% of my transactions with my NFC debit card, it's fast and secure, because I never give my card to anyone.
And yes: here in Poland this is 'standard')

batchtaster · Oct 27, 2014

Adam2222 said:
All that will do is annoy the 19 year old making $10/hour working the register. Douchey move.

Of course it's a douchey move. It's an appropriately douchey response to a douchey manoeuvre by the company.

And they'll complain to their boss, and they'll complain to their boss, and so forth. This is how things get fixed - from the grassroots level. Enough people do it and there'll be an obvious monetary penalty to the company. Until they're negatively impacted, they won't give a crap about the customer.

ChazUK · Oct 27, 2014

Making it difficult or restricting the ability for consumers to spend money easily in these stores seems so backwards to me.

I've not read much info on these issues but at face value it seems a but stupid.

iapplelove · Oct 27, 2014

Anakairos said:
So, do I understand it right?
If I came to the U.S. und tried to pay with my debit card with NFC it wouldn't work, either?
Really stupid.
(Just in case: yes, I do pay 90% of my transactions with my NFC debit card, it's fast and secure, because I never give my card to anyone.
And yes: here in Poland this is 'standard')

If you went to shop at CVS and needed NFC to complete your purchase then nope you would not be able to use your NFC adapted debt card. The terminal will read your card and will beep but the register says "another tender required".

Southern Dad · Oct 27, 2014

I've moved my prescriptions to Walgreens. Now instead of making a left, I make a right. They are 230 ft apart in my town.

bobob · Oct 27, 2014

Looks like MacRumors is going to milk this topic dry by posting a dozen overlapping topics - - just like they did when they promoted the fake bending story.

danielowenuk · Oct 27, 2014

As headline grabbing as this sounds, what it means in reality is they have switch off NFC payments, which is pretty dumb.

Looks like we are going to see massive variation in shops accepting payment types, which sucks, I thought NFC would be the standard, now it seems we are going to get different flavours of NFC

Michaelgtrusa · Oct 27, 2014

They will come around.

Menel · Oct 27, 2014

Lancer said:
So they plan on having their own separate mobile payment option, the whole point of using your smart phone is you don't have to bring anything else.

Looks like a backwards step that will probably backfire now all NFC devices (not only the iPhone6) aren't able to use the service.

This is from a guy not in the US and dying to have other options like this.

No, this has nothing to do with ApplePay. Wallet still required.

The entire point is enhanced security, using EMVco tokenization standard so that you dont give out critical personal acct information during transactions.

Dargoth · Oct 27, 2014

Check out the CurrentC app's comments sometime. One star, 1000 reviews, all angry (as far as I can tell). Seems like this issue is getting some traction at least...

Menel · Oct 27, 2014

danielowenuk said:
As headline grabbing as this sounds, what it means in reality is they have switch off NFC payments, which is pretty dumb.

Looks like we are going to see massive variation in shops accepting payment types, which sucks, I thought NFC would be the standard, now it seems we are going to get different flavours of NFC

1 flavor of NFC. CVS/RiteAid shut off ALL NFC.

ApplePay, GoogleWallet, Paypass, and Paywave. All.

All or nothing.

CVS and Rite Aid Officially Disable Apple Pay Support At Stores Nationwide

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