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Kroger Begins Accepting Apple Pay After Years of Holding Out

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Kroger this week began accepting Apple Pay and other contactless payment methods at select locations in Kentucky and Ohio, allowing customers to tap to pay with an iPhone or Apple Watch at checkout, according to customers on Reddit and Twitter.

Apple-Pay-Kroger.jpeg

It's unclear how many Kroger locations are now accepting Apple Pay, or if NFC-based payments will be expanded to all of the over 1,200 grocery stores that operate under the namesake Kroger brand. We have reached out to a company spokesperson for comment and will update this story if we receive any additional information.

Kroger was one of the largest Apple Pay holdouts in the U.S. since the service launched in 2014, alongside Walmart, The Home Depot, and Lowe's. Kroger did roll out Apple Pay at some of its other grocery chains in the past few years, including Ralphs in California, QFC in Washington and Oregon, and King Soopers in Colorado and Wyoming.

Kroger-owned chain Fred Meyer also recently started accepting Apple Pay at its stores in the Northwest, a spokesperson confirmed, while its North Carolina-based banner Harris Teeter tweeted it is "working towards accepting Apple Pay."

In a press release last year, Apple said that Apple Pay was accepted at more than 90% of U.S. retailers, and Kroger is a significant addition. The company also continues to offer its own service called Kroger Pay, which requires customers to scan a QR code at checkout to pay with a debit or credit card stored in the Kroger app.

Article Link: Kroger Begins Accepting Apple Pay After Years of Holding Out
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/15/kroger-fred-meyer-apple-pay/
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Kroger pay is an abomination. They don't have any idea how to make something easy or quick. Launching an app and then going into that app to get a QR code to then scan physically is not something you want to see anyone do - it's like the equivalent of seeing someone be told "that'll be 32.50 ma'am" and then seeing them act surprised that they need to pay, and open up their purse to rummage for the chequebook and a pen and start writing. It's like scary slow.

Contactless payment should be standard, and not just Apple Pay. Kroger just are incredibly cheap and won't modernize. It's pretty bad honestly when my 7-11 will take anything but Kroger will not.

Bear in mind that Kroger claimed they did this before in a similar limited market and claimed that there wasn't a lot of desire for it. Don't be fooled - they are only trying to prevent modernization and that expense.
 
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contacos said:
It’s wild to me that these stores deactivate a feature which they could easily support. Does that mean you can’t do tap to pay with your credit card at those stores either?! Not supporting tap to pay with credit card is like only offering cash. It would alienate so many potential customers here
Click to expand...

Correct. Walmart even goes so far as to order payment terminals with all NFC hardware removed.
 
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contacos said:
It’s wild to me that these stores deactivate a feature which they could easily support. Does that mean you can’t do tap to pay with your credit card at those stores either?! Not supporting tap to pay with credit card is like only offering cash. It would alienate so many potential customers here
Click to expand...

Right, they disable contactless completely, so nothing that needs it will work at those stores including contactless cards. They get away with it because contactless is not the norm in the US like it is in Europe. In the US the norm is still chip and even magnetic stripe. But Walmart disables contactless not only in the US, also in every other country where they have a presence except Canada. Those guys are a bunch of anti-contactless nuts.
 
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GMShadow said:
Correct. Walmart even goes so far as to order payment terminals with all NFC hardware removed.
Click to expand...

Not only that, they went so far as to prevent the use of Samsung Pay via magnetic stripe (MST) at all their stores. It worked at all Walmart and Sam’s stores for years while everything else requiring NFC didn’t, and then suddenly in December 2020 it stopped working.
 
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I have spoken with Harris Teeter (owned by Kroger) management about this, all store personnel agree it's about time. They are the last place I shop that holds out on ApplePay. Harris Teeter pre-Kroger was actually one of the first places I was able to use ApplePay. But they shut it off. The fees are a killer in a business where a 1% margin is considered good. They tried to come up with their own system thru the HT app but it was a huge pain to use - simply dunking the card was easier.
 
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Kroger chain where I’m at has been accepting it for a few months now. I can’t use it if I want to get cash back because then it asks me for a PIN, which I don’t have on my credit card (Discover). So if I want cash back, I actually have to use the credit card and I have to swipe the card. Contactless will also ask for a PIN.
 
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contacos said:
It’s wild to me that these stores deactivate a feature which they could easily support. Does that mean you can’t do tap to pay with your credit card at those stores either?! Not supporting tap to pay with credit card is like only offering cash. It would alienate so many potential customers here
Click to expand...
Apple charges more in processing fees than the standard credit card does.

I think regular tap to pay and EMV (the chip reader) are both cheaper than magnetic swipes. (Not in terms of hardware, but in terms of processing fees. Methods that are more likely to be fraudulently used have a higher risk of charge backs, and so processors will charge higher fees for using them.)
 
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CrapShack said:
I have spoken with Harris Teetter (owned by Kroger) management about this, all store personnel agree it's about time. They are the last place I shop that holds out on ApplePay. Harris Teeter pre-Kroger was actually one of the first places I was able to use ApplePay. But they shut it off. The fees are a killer in a business where a 1% margin is considered good. They tried to come up with their own system thru the HT app but it was a huge pain to use - simply dunking the card was easier.
Click to expand...
I downloaded the app for the local chain and it was crap. It made me scan a QR code to pay and most of the time their scanners wouldn’t scan the barcode. And it relied on a cell connection and the store I shop at is in a T-Mobile dead zone. I could have connected to the store’s public wifi but no thanks.
 
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It’s quite strange from the UK perspective that there are still stores in the US which block Apple Pay.

Acceptance here is 100%, so much so that I can go everywhere with just my phone/watch to pay for things and not even think about my wallet.

And cash? I can barely remember the last time I needed an ATM…
 
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