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That. It has nothing to do with Apple Pay in particular, but contactless payment at all.

Some of the stores I frequent are still making the rollout to chip readers, and that’s federally mandated.

Not federally mandated. If it were, I would think the consequences would be a lot stronger than "lose all fraud-related chargebacks with no recourse".
 
Yup. Apple Pay launched and anywhere that I could tap before I was using it. I rarely pull my cards out at all anymore. It's crazy to me that Apple Pay has been out longer in the US and still isn't standard because individual companies need to accept it. Hell, so many stores down there don't even accept chip cards yet, at least they didn't the last time I was there. I don't even remember the last time I swiped a card up here. Get with the times America. You guys are developing all this great tech (that often takes ages to get elsewhere) but vastly underutilizing it.
Most places I go to uses chip readers, and I’m from America. Tap to Pay is another story, but it’s gaining traction.
 
Albertsons were all converted to something else around here and then shuttered a couple months later, I'm not sure why as they were in good locations, I've always assumed something must have gone very wrong with the corporate parent. Which other brands does Safeway own? Ralphs are Kroger, correct? Pavilions? Gelson's? The Von's I've been in seemed like it wasn't well taken care of but perhaps it was just that one location.

Pavilions is part of Vons, so yes.

It’s a long list. And technically, Albertsons is the parent company, though I still say Safeway, as most are more familiar with it as an umbrella.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarkets_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfti1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarkets_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfti1

Of the Safeway-affiliated stores, we have both Albertsons and Vons (and Vons Pavilions) in my neighborhood, though the Albertsons are closing. The Vons are generally more appealing, though there are individual exceptions.



Anyone know the real reason why Harris Teeter stopped accepting Apple Pay? First I've heard of any retailer stop taking Apple Pay.
They turned off their contactless payment option.
 
But let's all remember that in 2013 Target was one of the biggest targets of credit card account breach, the largest hack of any retailer at that time. Millions of Target customers.

Yet people still shop there :)

So no chance in hell I'd ever feel secure with "Target Pay" or any such system they implement.

Not you, but all the Americans who claim to be concerned with security, kill me. If they really cared, they'd be using Samsung Pay so that they could use tokenized payments even on old POS swipe terminals without NFC support.

Yeah I don't get it. I was under the impression that if a business' POS had contactless payment functionality then Apple Pay would automatically work, yet I keep seeing articles on MacRumors saying this or that business is getting Apple Pay.

It's an Apple fan site thing. They could just say "NFC payments", but then some readers wouldn't know that also meant Apple Pay.

So did Safeway US have contactless before and now added Apple Pay support or are they just getting contactless for the first time and that, by default, means they'll have Apple Pay?

They're just getting it, so yes, by default.
 
But let's all remember that in 2013 Target was one of the biggest targets of credit card account breach, the largest hack of any retailer at that time. Millions of Target customers. So no chance in hell I'd ever feel secure with "Target Pay" or any such system they implement.
IMO, Target (and Home Depot, who got hacked a year later, losing something like thirteen millions more cards than Target did) are probably the two safest retailers to trust now-a-days in terms of data security.

They've been burned once and lost millions of dollars because of it. I don't see them allowing it to happen again.

Some of the stores I frequent are still making the rollout to chip readers, and that’s federally mandated.
Check this out:
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/emv-chip-credit-cards-required-law/
 
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Albertsons were all converted to something else around here and then shuttered a couple months later, I'm not sure why as they were in good locations, I've always assumed something must have gone very wrong with the corporate parent.

It went very right for the corporate parent! The Safeway-Albertson merger was conditional on them selling stores where they competed with each other to another grocery chain. The sold the worst performing stores (generally Albertsons) to Haggens, a small Washington State based chain, which became so big it went bankrupt (cash flow problems, no doubt) and their stores closed. As a result the three closest grocery stores to our house are now empty shells, and Safeway/Albertsons increased their market share while only having to support far fewer stores.

And to be on topic, Haggens accepted Apple Pay and was the first grocery store around here to do so.
 
Been able to use Apple Pay at Safeway here in Canada for a year or so now. All cards except for American Distress that is. :confused:
 
And to be on topic, Haggens accepted Apple Pay and was the first grocery store around here to do so.

Really loved our remodeled Haggen and loved the fact that they took ApplePay. We were quite disappointed when they closed.
 
Some other grocery stores that accept Apple Pay in the country include select Giant Food, Wegmans, BI-LO, Food Lion, Save Mart, Shop 'n Save, Trader Joe's, Winn-Dixie, Whole Foods Market, and United Supermarkets locations.

I thought I heard since whole foods was bought by amazon they have lost or are going to lose Apple Pay, no?
 
It went very right for the corporate parent! The Safeway-Albertson merger was conditional on them selling stores where they competed with each other to another grocery chain. The sold the worst performing stores (generally Albertsons) to Haggens, a small Washington State based chain, which became so big it went bankrupt (cash flow problems, no doubt) and their stores closed. As a result the three closest grocery stores to our house are now empty shells, and Safeway/Albertsons increased their market share while only having to support far fewer stores.

And to be on topic, Haggens accepted Apple Pay and was the first grocery store around here to do so.
That explains that. Thank you
 
Safeway doesn't own Albertsons in California. If thee are left (most are Save Mart or Lucky), they are owned by Save Mart. Since that all went down, Lucky is a lot better than it used to be (and supports Apple Pay and a single line for self-checkout kiosks), where Safeway quality has gone the way of Albertsons.
Actually, per Wikipedia:

"On February 19, 2014, Safeway began to explore selling itself. On March 6, 2014 Cerberus Capital Management (which also owns rival grocery chain Albertsons) announced it would purchase Safeway for $9.4 billion in a deal expected to close in the 4th quarter of the year.[28]

In January 2015, Bellingham, Washington-headquartered grocery chain Haggen announced it would buy 146 Vons, Albertsons, and Pavilions stores across Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona as part of anti-monopoly requirements following the merger. Some of the major metropolitan areas affected were Los Angeles, Portland, Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, Bakersfield, Seattle, and Las Vegas.:

So, Cerberus owns both Safeway & Albertson's. In the Sacramento area, the quality is quite good. Service could stand some improvement, but they have just gone on a major pricing reduction. If you watch their sales & coupons, you can get some good savings. Just got a 24 pack of their 16 oz. waters for 99¢. The Raley's/Bel Air chain here in this area is very overpriced.
 
Most places I go to uses chip readers, and I’m from America. Tap to Pay is another story, but it’s gaining traction.
To be fair the last time I was there was 2 years ago so maybe it has finally started to gain ground. Sad that it’s still one “generation” behind as it were though. Pretty much everywhere up here accepts tap unless they still have a very old system.
 
To be fair the last time I was there was 2 years ago so maybe it has finally started to gain ground. Sad that it’s still one “generation” behind as it were though. Pretty much everywhere up here accepts tap unless they still have a very old system.
I’m in a major city in the USA, and chip readers are gaining ground, but still not everywhere. Contactless payment is the same. In fact, two of the major retailers here that had Apple Pay first still use swipe. So it’s truly a mixed bag.
 
To be fair the last time I was there was 2 years ago so maybe it has finally started to gain ground. Sad that it’s still one “generation” behind as it were though. Pretty much everywhere up here accepts tap unless they still have a very old system.
I’m starting to see tap grow mostly mom and pop places because they got the new chip machines that have tap functionality built in.

The big retailers are just stubborn but that’s hopefully changing with Safeway, Albertsons etc coming on board with tap. Major hold outs left seems to be Walmart, Target, and Kroger.
 
Just used it at two Safeway’s here in AZ! Works as one would expect. Albertsons has it too now.

Just be careful as the screen mentions NOTHING about tapping. You just tap and it works anyway.
 
Just used it at two Safeway’s here in AZ! Works as one would expect. Albertsons has it too now.

Just be careful as the screen mentions NOTHING about tapping. You just tap and it works anyway.

Albertsons has had it for a while. The big problem was that they're in the process of switching to Safeway's system, which didn't have contactless until now.
 
I verified Apple Pay is working at Randall’s in Austin yesterday. There were no labels or icons on the card reader indicating this. I just tried it and it worked!
There are “virtual” lights on the screen which is the standard PayPass lights indicating contactless works.
 
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