Kroger-Owned Grocery Store Chain Harris Teeter Begins Accepting Apple Pay

[lartola]

I did not realize that. If that be the case, then merchants would be foolish to not accept Apple Pay since they will make more money by doing so. Every transaction that uses Apple Pay will net the merchant more $ since they won’t be paying the 3% or whatever processing fee that is paid to accept cards. I don’t use Apple Pay since my bank can’t be added. Maybe eventually….

No, they do pay the fee for accepting cards. They just don’t pay anything else specifically for taking Apple Pay (the idea that they do pay an extra fee specifically for taking apple pay is the widespread myth I was talking about, not the card network fee), so no money is being saved there for not taking it. They just do it because they want to harvest customer data and the mobile wallets prevent that to some extent.

 

[lartola]

The merchant still pays the same credit card fees whether you use Apple Pay or your credit card directly. The poster you responded to simply said Apple doesn't charge merchants. The credit card companies still do.

Exactly. And they also still pay the same fee if you use their own app such as Walmart Pay, which in the end still uses a credit or debit card stored in it for payment. However, it is a widespread myth that Apple does charge merchants and that’s why some such as Walmart won’t take Apple Pay. People have said that several times right here in this very thread. It’s just not true.

 

[lartola]

Ahhhhh…I guess it doesn’t matter that I can’t use Apple Pay then. I try to always use cash at local / small businesses for the very reason that it gives them more $. Bigger / chain companies I figure it doesn’t matter as much.

Exactly. Walmart doesn’t save any money because you can’t use Apple Pay. Unless you pay in cash, they still have to pay the same fee for taking cards. But we don’t need to help a huge company make more money by paying in cash. Local businesses yes, and it’s great that you do it, but not walmart, lowe’s or Home Depot. They’re already loaded.

 

[lindros2]

And it’s not true. No matter how many times a myth is repeated it won’t become true. APPLE DOES NOT CHARGE ANY FEES DIRECTLY TO MERCHANTS. And if the banks are passing on their fee to anyone, that would be most likely their account holders, not the merchants, since the fee banks pay to apple is for letting those account holders add their card to wallet, not for their affiliated merchants to take apple pay (in fact many merchants are affiliated with a bank not participating in apple pay and they still can take apple pay just fine as long as they have contactless enabled).

That’s not what I’m saying. I’ve been in this industry for 30 years.
It’s the World Elite Mastercard fees - the merchant fees are higher but the end user (me/you) benefits suck compared to “real” World Elite ones which aren’t Apple Card. It’s all across Reddit with screenshots to boot.

This is from 2019. Paywall.

Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Your Apple Card

Premium plastic has become a flashpoint in negotiations between the country’s largest stores and the Visa and Mastercard networks.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[lindros2]

There is no ApplePay system. It is just NFC contactless payment. When NFC and ApplePay were new places had to do extra work to not allow ApplePay while still accepting NFC cards. Probably something like reading the wallet header vs a bank card hearder in the transaction.

It’s also registered differently.
I.e. my AMEX in Apple Pay comes through as xxxx xxxx xxxx 5200 but that’s not the real number.

 

[tmiw]

That’s not what I’m saying. I’ve been in this industry for 30 years.
It’s the World Elite Mastercard fees - the merchant fees are higher but the end user (me/you) benefits suck compared to “real” World Elite ones which aren’t Apple Card. It’s all across Reddit with screenshots to boot.

This is from 2019. Paywall.

Retailers Don’t Like Paying the Fees for Your Apple Card

Premium plastic has become a flashpoint in negotiations between the country’s largest stores and the Visa and Mastercard networks.

www.bloomberg.com

I think the point being made is that someone using a particular card by tapping it isn't more expensive for merchants than inserting that same card (with exceptions, of course, especially once you start considering debit). However, as you said, it definitely costs merchants more to run a higher tier card than a lower tiered one.

Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if Walmart and the like thought that people might be more likely to use the likes of Visa Infinite/MasterCard World Elite (instead of the standard debit or lower tiered credit cards they're inserting now) if NFC got turned on. Though they really should be pushing to make those types of cards way less common instead if that's the case.

 

[lartola]

There is no ApplePay system. It is just NFC contactless payment. When NFC and ApplePay were new places had to do extra work to not allow ApplePay while still accepting NFC cards. Probably something like reading the wallet header vs a bank card hearder in the transaction.

They don’t even do that. They usually just shut off the contactless reader and that’s it: they don’t accept anything that uses NFC including contactless cards. At least that’s what all famous US holdouts such as Walmart, Lowe’s or Home Depot have been doing.

 

[lartola]

The companies I mentioned still don't have NFC compliant terminals (for the most part). They'll all switch over to start using NFC terminals, in my opinion, once they can use it for non-contact payments without going through the Apple Pay system.

They do have nfc compliant terminals (walmart has ingenico lane 7000 pinpads, for instance, which are fully NFC compliant unless the nfc reader hardware was deliberately removed). They usually just shut off the NFC reader and don’t accept anything that could use it all the way down to contactless cards.

And BTW there is no such thing as “the apple pay system”. As long as they have NFC enabled and take contactless cards they take apple pay too. That’s why people who travel internationally can use apple pay even in countries where apple hasn’t been rolled it out just as long as there is nfc contactless at businesses in those countries.

 

[gregmancuso]

They don’t even do that. They usually just shut off the contactless reader and that’s it: they don’t accept anything that uses NFC including contactless cards. At least that’s what all famous US holdouts such as Walmart, Lowe’s or Home Depot have been doing.

No. There are, or have been, merchants that accepted NFC but blocked ApplePay. CVS was one of them. I don’t know of any now but it was not uncommon when ApplePay was first coming out.

 

[gregmancuso]

It’s also registered differently.
I.e. my AMEX in Apple Pay comes through as xxxx xxxx xxxx 5200 but that’s not the real number.

True. I wasn’t even referring to the virtual card numbers that are deferent from the physical cards.

 

[BaldiMac]

No. There are, or have been, merchants that accepted NFC but blocked ApplePay. CVS was one of them. I don’t know of any now but it was not uncommon when ApplePay was first coming out.

Everything I've read said that was a myth. You either support NFC or you don't.

For your example, CVS simply disabled NFC to block Apple Pay.

CVS begins disabling NFC terminals in stores to cut off Apple Pay support in favor of 'CurrentC' - 9to5Mac

CVS Pharmacy has decided to disable all NFC terminals in all of its stores after it was discovered that Apple...

9to5mac.com

 

[gregmancuso]

Everything I've read said that was a myth. You either support NFC or you don't.

Not a myth. I lived through it.

Not that me thing, but another thing at the start - the banks could also tell the charge source. Cap1 used to decline purchases at BestBuy if you used ApplePay but would approve NFC charge from the same card. That may be more due to the systems not translating the ApplePay token card with the matching physical card number.

 

[BaldiMac]

Not a myth. I lived through it.

Not that me thing, but another thing at the start - the banks could also tell the charge source. Cap1 used to decline purchases at BestBuy if you used ApplePay but would approve NFC charge from the same card. That may be more due to the systems not translating the ApplePay token card with the matching physical card number.

Banks declining a card are a different issue than merchants blocking Apple Pay.

 

[tmiw]

Everything I've read said that was a myth. You either support NFC or you don't.

For your example, CVS simply disabled NFC to block Apple Pay.

CVS begins disabling NFC terminals in stores to cut off Apple Pay support in favor of 'CurrentC' - 9to5Mac

CVS Pharmacy has decided to disable all NFC terminals in all of its stores after it was discovered that Apple...

9to5mac.com

I actually did hear something about Amazon disabling mobile wallets at their Amazon Go type stores before while allowing tapping the physical card. I feel like that's been fixed now, though.

 

[lartola]

No. There are, or have been, merchants that accepted NFC but blocked ApplePay. CVS was one of them. I don’t know of any now but it was not uncommon when ApplePay was first coming out.

It was uncommon, if it ever happened at all. Usually they disable nfc altogether. I’ve been using apple pay for 7 years in both the US and Mexico and haven’t found a single place in either country where NFC is active and contactless cards work but not apple pay. Not one. It’s always been either both work or none work, but never one works and the other doesn’t. As for CVS, they had nfc completely disabled at all their stores until 2018. The only thing that worked there during that time was Samsung Pay via MST.

 

[lartola]

I actually did hear something about Amazon disabling mobile wallets at their Amazon Go type stores before while allowing tapping the physical card. I feel like that's been fixed now, though.

I suppose you mean the now extinct amazon bookstores. The amazon Go stores don’t have cashiers in store, you just grab your stuff and go. The payment is made online via an app. And online they can certainly disable or avoid accepting each wallet individually. But it cannot be done (or it’s too hard to do) for physical transactions using nfc. In that case, it’s all or none. That’s why merchants who refuse to take apple pay shut off nfc completely and by doing so they block everything else that uses nfc too.

 

[lartola]

Not a myth. I lived through it.

Not that me thing, but another thing at the start - the banks could also tell the charge source. Cap1 used to decline purchases at BestBuy if you used ApplePay but would approve NFC charge from the same card. That may be more due to the systems not translating the ApplePay token card with the matching physical card number.

Yeah, banks can do that. Merchants can’t. That’s why they shut off nfc completely when they don’t want to take apple pay, and don’t care that they’re also preventing the use of a ton of other payment methods that also use nfc.

 

[lartola]

It’s also registered differently.
I.e. my AMEX in Apple Pay comes through as xxxx xxxx xxxx 5200 but that’s not the real number.

Yeah that’s for added security. Thanks to that, many card issuers can keep your apple pay working while you wait for your new card if they had to cancel your physical card for any reason.

 

[tmiw]

I suppose you mean the now extinct amazon bookstores. The amazon Go stores don’t have cashiers in store, you just grab your stuff and go. The payment is made online via an app. And online they can certainly disable or avoid accepting each wallet individually. But it cannot be done (or it’s too hard to do) for physical transactions using nfc. In that case, it’s all or none. That’s why merchants who refuse to take apple pay shut off nfc completely and by doing so they block everything else that uses nfc too.

Amazon Books never enabled NFC in the time they were open. Amazon Go, on the other hand (or possibly some place like Hudson that used their hardware, I forget), had readers that let you insert or tap your card at the entrance. Those readers were the ones that supposedly didn't like mobile wallets.

 

[gregmancuso]

Banks declining a card are a different issue than merchants blocking Apple Pay.

Agreed. As I said - not the same thing but another common occurrence at the start.

1. Some merchants - CVS for example - accepted NFC cards but would block ApplePay regardless of card

2. Some banks - CapitalOne for example - would decline Applepay transactions but approve NFC transactions using the same bank card.

1 appears be be merchant blocking the ApplePay at the wallet header level in the reader. 2 appears to be the banks declining the ApplePay virtualized card number vs the physical card number.

 

[BaldiMac]

Agreed. As I said - not the same thing but another common occurrence at the start.

1. Some merchants - CVS for example - accepted NFC cards but would block ApplePay regardless of card

2. Some banks - CapitalOne for example - would decline Applepay transactions but approve NFC transactions using the same bank card.

1 appears be be merchant blocking the ApplePay at the wallet header level in the reader. 2 appears to be the banks declining the ApplePay virtualized card number vs the physical card number.

Again, (1) was a myth. CVS turned off NFC completely to block Apple Pay.

For (2), I'd guess that was a bug. Cap1 had no reason to block Apple Pay after specifically choosing to support it.

 

[lartola]

Amazon Books never enabled NFC in the time they were open. Amazon Go, on the other hand (or possibly some place like Hudson that used their hardware, I forget), had readers that let you insert or tap your card at the entrance. Those readers were the ones that supposedly didn't like mobile wallets.

Oh ok. I didn’t know amazon go had card readers in store. They always advertised them as stores where you “just grab your items and go”.

 

[lartola]

Agreed. As I said - not the same thing but another common occurrence at the start.

1. Some merchants - CVS for example - accepted NFC cards but would block ApplePay regardless of card

2. Some banks - CapitalOne for example - would decline Applepay transactions but approve NFC transactions using the same bank card.

1 appears be be merchant blocking the ApplePay at the wallet header level in the reader. 2 appears to be the banks declining the ApplePay virtualized card number vs the physical card number.

CVS didn’t do as you say. They had nfc completely disabled and only samsung pay via mst worked at their stores. All physical cards had to be inserted or swiped.

 

[Tagbert]

Walmart is a holdout because they have their own Walmart pay thing in their app. They don’t want to pay processing fees to Apple when they can encourage people to use their own system.

There is not extra fee paid to Apple for ApplePay. It’s just another NFC wireless payment like tapping your credit card. It has other features that enhance security over that card, but there is no additional cost to the merchant.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

This thread has gone in different directions.

But the “never happened to me” or “I’m not sick” or the Apple Communities common “mine works fine must be you” really upsets me.

And this post is insensitive.

I never had fraud until my identity was stolen. Four years of hell.

Just you wait.

Identity theft is NOT the same thing as credit card fraud.

And in the US, credit card fraud is nothing but a minor inconvenience, you fix it with a phone call, it costs you nothing but a few minutes. By law your liability can't be more than $50, and card issuers always waive that.

Yes, having somebody actually get enough of your info to impersonate you can be really rough to fix. But having your card number grabbed is NOTHING like that. It's completely trivial.

Having to punch in a PIN for every transaction wouldn't have saved you, but it would absolutely be a PITA for everybody.