Early on, ApplePay *did* in fact work at HomeDepot. Then they shut off contactless payments on their terminals.
As you note though -- the big chains tend to have the equipment to support contactless but choose to disable it.
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Apple Pay Overtakes Starbucks as Most Popular Mobile Payment Platform in the US
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Early on, ApplePay *did* in fact work at HomeDepot. Then they shut off contactless payments on their terminals.
As you note though -- the big chains tend to have the equipment to support contactless but choose to disable it.
The store just has to accept contactless cards, and ApplePay will be accepted like a contactless card (in the UK, up to £30 per payment, £100 per day). If the store has more intelligent terminals, then they realise that this is not just a contactless card that could have been stolen or lost and found, but the payment has been authorised by the card holder right there, and there is no low limit (probably same limit as a card payment).
It's your bank that needs to agree to all of this. When Apple Pay was new, some people with US cards travelled to Europe and their cards just worked, to everyone's surprise. If your bank isn't on board, then ApplePay works nowhere.
On this very forum I always get served up an ad for the Ridge Wallet, a slim physical wallet. Really? In the age of smartphone payments your touting how your slim wallet solution is better than the old fat wallet you have? Umm, wallets are going the way of the dodo bird, dude.
Target has rolled it out nationwide. Walmart, that's another story. They are trying to do their own thing which will of course fail miserably.
One thing I've noticed though is that even though it may *appear* places don't take it, try it anyway. I was surprised when I tried it at a small mom & pop grocery store with older POS terminals. I thought, hey, this credit card terminal looks like it might do it. Bingo, it did. Cashier was surprised too.
I use Apple Pay almost every single day but it's so frustrating how some of the major retailers still refuse to support it.
Target officially supports Apple Pay. I've used it there.
This. Besides the grocers you mentioned even Aldi takes it. I hope this forces some of the big holdouts to cave sooner rather than later.
Target officially supports Apple Pay. I've used it there.
This. Besides the grocers you mentioned even Aldi takes it. I hope this forces some of the big holdouts to cave sooner rather than later.
I am sure Apple having their own credit card has helped boost Apple Pay adoption somewhat. This will in turn incentivise more places to support Apple Pay in the US, which in turn leads to more people using it. Meanwhile, paying for purchases with the Apple Card will also allow Apple to earn more commission than via conventional credit cards.
So simple, yet so genius.
So simple, yet so genius.
Quite the opposite here in Atlanta. The only places that don't have Apple Pay are those stalwarts that refuse to get Apple Pay... Wal-Mart, Publix, Kroger, Etc...
Other than these it's everywhere I go, even @ my preferred gas station Chevron.
I don't use the other two, but how does your Target not accept it? I thought it was in all Target stores a year or so ago?
The technical piece of enabling contactless is generally not complicated at all.
On the business side, there are other factors. I don't know how it works in your country, but in the US it's pretty common for banks to issue debit cards that can also act like credit cards (i.e. no PIN required, gets authorized like a credit card even though it ultimately comes out of the checking account). They do this because the gov't here capped the interchange fee that big banks can charge to authorize debit transactions. The fee the banks charge for credit transactions isn't capped, so it's in the banks best interest that customers choose to process transactions from their checking account as "credit".
Merchants know this, and many big merchants (once they figure out you've swiped/dipped a combo card into the payment terminal) will attempt to get you to process the transaction as "debit", not "credit". It saves the merchant money if they're able to get you to do that, plain and simple.
That workflow isn't "out-of-the-box" for contactless payments, which I think is one of a few business-related reasons that some of the larger merchants in the US haven't enabled contactless yet.
There's only B&Q here in the UK i've come across not accepting any type of contactless. Most others have lifted the £30 minimum too.
In Australia, Apple Pay works everywhere as mentioned previously.
Other posters seem to have a different experience with transaction limits.
I’ve found that not all retailers require a pin for transactions above $100. Recently I purchased a new iMac for $3100 in JB HiFi with no pin required.
I believe this is due to the inherent security of Apple Pay, unmatched by most other payment methods.
Other posters seem to have a different experience with transaction limits.
I’ve found that not all retailers require a pin for transactions above $100. Recently I purchased a new iMac for $3100 in JB HiFi with no pin required.
I believe this is due to the inherent security of Apple Pay, unmatched by most other payment methods.
I thought the same thing. However, Starbucks can be used on any platform, not just Apple devices. Also, the “point system” Starbucks offers gives customers a lot of incentive.
Also, the Starbucks system was one of the first to actually work every time. I’m not saying that Apple Pay doesn’t work. I’m just saying the the Starbucks system was one of the first to be pretty solid.
At random retailers, the POS can vary, and the way to use Apple Pay can seem glitchy, but only because of the retailer.
I use Apple Pay most places now out here in California. I also use Starbucks payment that happens to be auto loaded via ApplePay, so I suppose I use both systems and one uses the other!
You don’t have to pay any interest if you pay your balance in full every month, which shouldn’t be an issue if you’re not spending money that you don’t have or expect to have in the near-term.
Just add the card to your phone in the Starbucks app and get rid of the card (or keep it in a safe place). Then expose it to the digital wallet for easy access when you visit a store. I use ApplePay to auto load my Gold Starbucks card so only in that sense does Starbucks use ApplePay, not in store.
Yep. Even the ATL baseball stadium beer & food stands take ApplePay. QuikTrip takes AP inside but not yet at the pump, at least not at any of the ones I've visited. Same for RaceTrac last I was there.
As an aside, the Sams Club app has the ability to scan your stuff and perform checkout. Completely avoid the checkout kiosks; no standing in line. This is huge when the store is busy.
I was wondering why PYMNTS was all but saying that Apple Pay was a failure the other day. It's almost as though they expected this article to come out or something. *shrug*
(I've always found them to be anti-Apple Pay, but I haven't figured out why.)
EMVco and card network certification (up to four separate ones or more because each of their contactless standards is at least a little bit different) can bump up the technical challenges significantly. For instance, a few places disabled contactless entirely when Visa's EMV contactless mandate took effect earlier this year (instead of upgrading their magnetic stripe-based contactless implementations). It's similar to how a lot of places had chip hardware for quite a while before actually being able to turn it on.
Of course, the challenges would be a lot less had retailers not gone with custom POS integrations and the like, but it's obvious at this point that they'll never give up on those.
The Durbin Amendment caps interchange for large banks' debit cards to 0.05% regardless of how they're run, so it shouldn't matter for those to always route over Visa or MC. However, interchange in general is likely one of the reasons for the continued holdouts. As it is now, most smaller purchases are still done in cash in the US; contactless payment moving a lot of that over to cards instead would be a nightmare for stores' bottom lines, especially since interchange for credit cards and for debit cards not covered under Durbin is much higher than in a lot of other countries. (Note: this is why $5-10 minimums for card use seem to be more common in the US than in the places where interchange has been capped to low levels.)
IMO, at some point, the networks will likely need to start incentivizing retailers to accept contactless by offering at least a token decrease in interchange for such transactions. While I'm sure they may be able to get almost full adoption without it eventually, I can imagine minimums and surcharging ending up significantly more common than they are now--to the point where it's something that's expected at most stores.
As for debit routing with contactless, it's totally possible. For instance, Sprouts and Vons here will prompt for PIN if you tap with a debit card (and will say "debit" on the receipt, too, unlike the "Visa" or "Mastercard" it would say if it wasn't routed as such). Whether stores necessarily want to do that, though, is the question, mainly because it's kind of a UX hassle for customers.
(I've always found them to be anti-Apple Pay, but I haven't figured out why.)
EMVco and card network certification (up to four separate ones or more because each of their contactless standards is at least a little bit different) can bump up the technical challenges significantly. For instance, a few places disabled contactless entirely when Visa's EMV contactless mandate took effect earlier this year (instead of upgrading their magnetic stripe-based contactless implementations). It's similar to how a lot of places had chip hardware for quite a while before actually being able to turn it on.
Of course, the challenges would be a lot less had retailers not gone with custom POS integrations and the like, but it's obvious at this point that they'll never give up on those.
The Durbin Amendment caps interchange for large banks' debit cards to 0.05% regardless of how they're run, so it shouldn't matter for those to always route over Visa or MC. However, interchange in general is likely one of the reasons for the continued holdouts. As it is now, most smaller purchases are still done in cash in the US; contactless payment moving a lot of that over to cards instead would be a nightmare for stores' bottom lines, especially since interchange for credit cards and for debit cards not covered under Durbin is much higher than in a lot of other countries. (Note: this is why $5-10 minimums for card use seem to be more common in the US than in the places where interchange has been capped to low levels.)
IMO, at some point, the networks will likely need to start incentivizing retailers to accept contactless by offering at least a token decrease in interchange for such transactions. While I'm sure they may be able to get almost full adoption without it eventually, I can imagine minimums and surcharging ending up significantly more common than they are now--to the point where it's something that's expected at most stores.
As for debit routing with contactless, it's totally possible. For instance, Sprouts and Vons here will prompt for PIN if you tap with a debit card (and will say "debit" on the receipt, too, unlike the "Visa" or "Mastercard" it would say if it wasn't routed as such). Whether stores necessarily want to do that, though, is the question, mainly because it's kind of a UX hassle for customers.
That is why do many places don't accept apple pay, apple gets a cut. Apple are themselves slowing the adoption of it by being a middleman.
This is about Apple Pay, not Apple Card
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Umm I live in Phoenix.
Apple Pay is at Circle K for gas, as well as Mobil & Shell via apps.
Basha’s, is a grocery store and takes Apple Pay. Safeway takes Apple Pay. Sprouts has Apple Pay. Costco has Apple Pay.
Target most definitely takes Apple Pay.
I take a walk through Scottsdale mall, and pretty much the entire mall takes Apple Pay.
Most mom and pops have Apple Pay, especially with those little card readers next to the register.
are you not looking hard enough? I use Apple Pay 95% of the time easily. The only one you got right is Walmart.
tip: Look for the PayPass logo, NOT the Apple logo.
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Apple needs to convince the sclerotic geezers at Kroger to accept Apple Pay.
Do you have a source for this?
Last I knew, merchant fees aren't affected. It's the card issuers who pay Apple's cut.
Edit:
Apple claims no cost to merchants, see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204274
Merchants may even pay _lower_ fees on Apple Pay transactions due to the higher level of security, see https://www.macworld.com/article/26...scount-from-banks-walmart-says-no-thanks.html
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