Not going to happen here until they upgraded their current terminals to contactless.
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Kroger Begins Accepting Apple Pay After Years of Holding Out
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Having to use their app, along with them storing your card info, kind of defeats some of the purpose.
ApplePay adds one of the nation's largest grocery chains. This deserves:
A. A celebration! Congrats to Apple....
or
B. A huge national lawsuit complaining that ApplePay is becoming too dominant, too successful 🤣
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Kroger is the only grocer in my area. So of course, the whole family has starved for years until we can cut Apple in on each food purchase transaction. The kids are only about 65% as tall as their classmates and we can count all of our ribs from 20 paces... but who needs basic nutrition if Apple can't have a bite of every dollar spent? 
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At least cash is somewhat universal. It would be like only accepting Discover cards.
They aren't removed though, just not enabled in software.
at Sam's Club, scan & go is even better than Apple Pay lmao. I wish all stores would do THAT.
Walmart are really doing whatever they can to get people to use their lame app. They are even going as far as removing the price scanners around the store and saying "you can check prices using our app!"
Kroger stores use the Verifone MX915, they had contactless inside of them from the moment they were purchased.
I swear dude, after Covid it should be mandated that everywhere accept tap to pay methods. It’s freaking ridiculous that it’s 2023 and these stupid corporations are allowed to get away with this garbage.
The cost of creating/administering Kroger Pay and the rest must be higher than benefits received.
The largest grocery chain in Texas, that gets a LOT of praise for the things they do right) also does not offer Apple Pay - or ANY digital wallet (which would leave me unable to purchase groceries if my debit card malfunctions); instead, they've invested in their OWN digital payment offerings, which has rolled out rather clunkily at only a few stores (by most accounts, it's pretty inconvenient to use).
HEB in Texas is the same way - they don't accept ANY digital wallet, instead forging ahead with their own rival product (which is only accepted at a few stores - and you have to download the app to even find out which ones), which has horrible reviews.
Unless, of course, you want to give your banking info to them for a store-branded debit card - which still requires you to have a physical card on your person to pay with.
They must have paid some intern $50 to throw Kroger Pay together, because it is the biggest absolute pile of turd **** I have ever used. Sometimes you get cryptic error messages for no apparent reason, with no explanation! It also does not work at the gas station, at all.
No they don't! In fact Apple Pay charges no extra fees, and the Merchant Fees are slightly reduced compared to standard credit cards. They also get a slightly reduced rate because the tech they use makes fraud harder, so the "insurance" part of the fees goes dow (ie they only pay the NFC rate, not the magnetic swipe rate, for obvious reasons)
At least so claims: https://blog.clover.com/apple-pay-for-business-what-will-it-cost-me/
In any large company at some point you get the right hand working very hard to do X at exactly the same time that the left hand is doing all it can to discourage X.
One crazy example is how (definitely at Ralphs, and often at other supermarkets) one part of the system wants you to use the self-service checkout (because cheaper than cashiers, duh) at the very same time that a different part of the company, handling coupons and suchlike, is making it such a freaking pain in the ass to use coupons at self-service checkout that any customer with coupons avoids them...
Are you talking about HEB Go? Because you are forced to "scan and go" and you aren't able to just go to a register and use it to pay like you can with Walmart Pay.
This is all so weird for a European. Do stores that accept contactless payments have to opt-in to Apple Pay as well or is it the case when a store has contactless payment that they also automatically support Apple Pay?
Here in The Netherlands all stores offer contactless payment and that also means that they automatically support Apple Pay. 79.1% of all counter payments are electronically (of which 0.4% credit, 78.7 debit) and 20.9% cash. Of non-cash transactions, 89% is done contactless.
Here in The Netherlands all stores offer contactless payment and that also means that they automatically support Apple Pay. 79.1% of all counter payments are electronically (of which 0.4% credit, 78.7 debit) and 20.9% cash. Of non-cash transactions, 89% is done contactless.
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I do not live where Kroger and Walmart operate, but for those who do and seemingly have valid complaints, why do you continue to shop there and add to the billions that the Walton clan and hedge funds have amassed?
Menards doesn't take contactless either...
I come prepared with the QR code ready to go and half the time it just crashes back to the home screen before the incredibly slow scanner can read it. About half the time it does that I have to log in all over again.
You’re absolutely right about them lying about the desire for it. The payment terminals even have the hardware ready to go, they just don’t want to turn it on.
Because those billions make it impossible for smaller grocers and stores to operate at affordable prices. I do shop smaller when I can but for many things there’s not another good option. Not everyone lives where there are lots of alternatives.
And more relevant to this article, ironically every one of those smaller merchants accepts Apple Pay no problem. Many of them are astonished to realize that they do, but they do.
There is one restaurant which recently inexplicably stopped supporting Apple Pay and went back to magstripe only which I honestly thought was illegal or at least extremely ill advised since they are now fully on the hook for any fraud.
Card processors must want to charge extra for Apple Pay and most people must not realize that they’re paying for it.
But Apple doesn’t charge the stores anything. Merchants pay the same fee for tap to pay with a card as for tap to pay with apple pay using an iphone or apple watch. There’s no additional fee for them to accept apple pay. That’s why even merchants in countries where apple pay isn’t yet available can still accept it from foreign visitors with supported cards just as long as they accept tap to pay.