Supermarket Chain Publix Says It's Rolling Out Apple Pay Support All Stores [Update: No]

[MacRumors]

Florida-based supermarket chain Publix, which has over 1200 stores throughout the southeastern United States, has announced (via Reddit) that it is rolling out support for Apple Pay to all of its stores "within the coming weeks."

The news comes via Publix's Twitter account yesterday, responding to a customer who asked about the lack of support for Apple's mobile payments system.

Good Morning. Our stores are currently rolling out this technology to all of our stores. If your store does not currently accept Apple Pay it should within the coming weeks. ? Monique - Publix (@Publix) May 29, 2019

Not all of Publix's Twitter support agents appear to have been briefed on the news, however, as just in the past few hours other responses to customers have simply offered to "share your suggestion" with the customer service or payments team.

There have been scattered reports of Publix testing Apple Pay in a few stores for a while now, but it looks like a full rollout is finally underway.

Update 8:00 PM: In a follow-up Tweet, Publix now says its initial response was "incorrect." Publix is actually rolling out its own Publix Pay system.

Article Link: Supermarket Chain Publix Says It's Rolling Out Apple Pay Support All Stores [Update: No]

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Welcome to the 21st Century Publix!

I think that leaves Walmart as the last remaining holdout from defunct MCX/CurrentC.

 

[iAVERY]

Florida-based supermarket chain Publix, which has over 1200 stores throughout the southeastern United States, has announced (via Reddit) that it is rolling out support for Apple Pay to all of its stores "within the coming weeks."

The news comes via Publix's Twitter account yesterday, responding to a customer who asked about the lack of support for Apple's mobile payments system.

​

Not all of Publix's Twitter support agents appear to have been briefed on the news, however, as just in the past few hours other responses to customers have simply offered to "share your suggestion" with the customer service or payments team.

There have been scattered reports of Publix testing Apple Pay in a few stores for a while now, but it looks like a full rollout is finally underway.

Article Link: Supermarket Chain Publix Says It's Rolling Out Apple Pay Support All Stores

FINALLY!!!

 

[sputnikv]

excellent

edit: this is stupid

 

[munpip214]

Welcome to the 21st Century Publix!

I think that leaves Walmart as the last remaining holdout from defunct MCX/CurrentC.

Yes, Walmart please do it. Then I could actually leave my credit cards at home

 

[dlewis23]

About time. Super happy about this and can’t wait to use it.

Anyone who doesn’t live near a Publix is missing out

 

[HMFIC03]

Welcome to the 21st Century Publix!

I think that leaves Walmart as the last remaining holdout from defunct MCX/CurrentC.

Now if only H.E.B. would take it!

 

[DiamondGCoupe]

I probably sent them 30+ emails over the last year to add this. About everytime I went in I’d leave feeling like I wish they add Apple Pay already!

 

[Robert.Walter]

Welcome to the 21st Century Publix!

I think that leaves Walmart as the last remaining holdout from defunct MCX/CurrentC.

Kroger and its vassal subsidiaries are all Apple Pay hold outs.

 

[Jyby]

Science Rules!

 

[iAVERY]

Just deleted the publix app off my iPhone. I want no part of this garbage.

 

[zorinlynx]

It's time for payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) to start mandating NFC support to be enabled in all payment terminals. This is getting ridiculous that a fast, secure, and standard form of payment is being disabled on purpose for stupid reasons in the US.

Chase is issuing NFC capable credit cards now (as in, you can tap the card itself like Europeans have been doing for years), maybe if more banks pick up on this there will be pressure to get NFC working universally.
[doublepost=1559273328][/doublepost]Whoah. The tweet mentioning Publix Pay was deleted. Maybe "Monique" screwed up and it really IS Apple Pay?

 

[GTDaveMac]

It's time for payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) to start mandating NFC support to be enabled in all payment terminals. This is getting ridiculous that a fast, secure, and standard form of payment is being disabled on purpose for stupid reasons in the US.

Chase is issuing NFC capable credit cards now (as in, you can tap the card itself like Europeans have been doing for years), maybe if more banks pick up on this there will be pressure to get NFC working universally.
[doublepost=1559273328][/doublepost]Whoah. The tweet mentioning Publix Pay was deleted. Maybe "Monique" screwed up and it really IS Apple Pay?

There are still a bunch of tweets on it if you go to their account and select tweets and replies. The more attention this gets right now the better. Please post your displeasure!

 

[QquegChristian]

Ugh. As a food photographer who does all my shopping at Publix, I need this now. Especially since I always have to do chip/pin for two transactions back to back as I can’t mix personal/work groceries on the same receipt.

I’ll use “Publix Pay” if they give me 5% off like Target. Otherwise, it was always kind of nice that Publix didn’t stoop to the loyalty tracking stuff of other grocers.

 

[tmiw]

It's time for payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) to start mandating NFC support to be enabled in all payment terminals. This is getting ridiculous that a fast, secure, and standard form of payment is being disabled on purpose for stupid reasons in the US.

Chase is issuing NFC capable credit cards now (as in, you can tap the card itself like Europeans have been doing for years), maybe if more banks pick up on this there will be pressure to get NFC working universally.

My theory is that the holdouts are the same ones that aren't fans of the whole card interchange system in the first place. Not that they'd necessarily prefer that people use cash instead, mind you, just that they'd at minimum prefer to pay much less than the ~3% per transaction the highest tier cards command (and ideally closer to 0%).

Anyway, charge a few tens of bpp less for NFC transactions compared to swiped/inserted ones and I bet many of those holdouts will fall over themselves to promote its use.

 

[calstanford]

Hahaha how pathetic. Even they don’t know their own payment system which obviously no one will use.

 

[grobik]

Then four months later when "Publix pay" fails they roll out unbranded support for Apple and Google Pay. *cough cough, target*

 

[Wolffie]

Any love for Food Lion?

 

[centauratlas]

Publix is just being stupid. Otherwise they are a fine store.

 

[chfilm]

What I don’t understand- here in Germany, I think not a single store “supports Apple Pay”- yet you can use it everywhere where there’s a wireless terminal.
Is it different in the US in stores like this one? Do they somehow block Apple pay or what?

 

[mikethemartian]

Any love for Food Lion?

Are they still around? I remember there was a controversy over whether or not they were mislabeling expiration dates.

 

[Maetzle]

Do those stores have NFC compatible terminals already and are just blocking Apple Pay from them? Because even when Apple Pay wasn't launched in Austria a friend of mine who came to visit could pay everywhere that had contactless payment terminals for regular contactless-enabled debit/credit cards.

 

[NAStarr]

What a terrible idea. Nobody wants “Publix Pay”. Basically this is Publix: “we know what you want, we don’t really care, we made this instead... hope you like this after we got your hopes up about what we know you want.” They should just cancel all they’ve put into “Publix Pay” and just get the real thing. #applepayornothing

 

[ke-iron]

It's time for payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) to start mandating NFC support to be enabled in all payment terminals. This is getting ridiculous that a fast, secure, and standard form of payment is being disabled on purpose for stupid reasons in the US.

Chase is issuing NFC capable credit cards now (as in, you can tap the card itself like Europeans have been doing for years), maybe if more banks pick up on this there will be pressure to get NFC working universally.
[doublepost=1559273328][/doublepost]Whoah. The tweet mentioning Publix Pay was deleted. Maybe "Monique" screwed up and it really IS Apple Pay?

My new Amex platinum card has the WiFi looking symbol on it, so it too can be used as nfc tap payment. They also support Apple Pay so I use that instead.

 

[neuropsychguy]

We stopped going to Publix once Aldi came to town. Quality is similar for food and prices are much lower. Publix is a great supermarket but or grocery bill would be 25-50% higher if we exclusively shopped there. Apple Pay at Aldi works well.