Target Says it Has No Plans Underway to Accept Apple Pay in Stores

[IJ Reilly]

Inserting the card to read the chip is incredibly slow. Much slower than swiping the card.

Not just slow, but slow beyond belief?

The chip only seems slower because you have to wait for the reader to release the card before you can remove it and doodle on the screen. This system will feel incredibly fast if and when the U.S. banks begin to accept chip and PIN.

 

[Jason83]

Well I still have no plans to start shopping at Target, so I guess it all works out.

 

[EricNau]

Credit and debit Cards with chips are not slow. In Canada, I've been tapping to pay for over 5 years.

They are slow, by design. By "tapping" you aren't using the chip technology, you're using NFC (the exact technology Target refuses to accept). If you were to insert your same card it would take significantly longer than you're used to.

 

[Mlrollin91]

Not just slow, but slow beyond belief?

The chip only seems slower because you have to wait for the reader to release the card before you can remove it and doodle on the screen. This system will feel incredibly fast if and when the U.S. banks begin to accept chip and PIN.

No, I'm talking about purchases that don't require a signature, so under $50. You insert the card and it says "Processing, do not remove card" For at least 15 seconds. Thats not an exaggeration. Our readers must be different than those in Canada and Europe. We don't have to wait for the card to be released, we just need to wait for the transaction to process and that is what takes so dang long.

 

[Rigby]

You pick your stores based on how receptive they are to Apple Pay?

I wouldn't go that far, but I'd defintely shop there more often due to the added privacy afforded by Apple Pay. Target has one of the biggest and most advanced data mining operations.

Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Apple didn't create Apple Pay for any sort of reason other than profit and the stores aren't trying to stonewall for any reason other than they don't want to hand this market to Apple.

According to various reports the fee for Apple comes out of the banks' transaction fee, so it doesn't add cost for the retailers compared to using physical credit cards.

That said, I wouldn't use Apple Pay in Target anyway unless they added support for the Debit RedCard.

Well, to turn your sentence around: "Target didn't create the Redcard for any sort of reason other than profit", it allows them to track your habits in even more detail. There are other credit cards that give a similar amount of cashback without giving Target all the data.

 

[Derekuda]

Apple Pay is more secure than the chip-and-sign technology currently supported by Target. For a retailer with their security record, I would have thought they would value security a little more.

Now, using cash is just about the silliest thing I've heard all morning. Why would I voluntarily forgo the free built-in purchase protections provided by my card? Free extended warranty, return protection, theft insurance, price matching, etc. Plus, free cashback. Not to mention, cash is just about the least secure payment method available. If you lose it, it's gone forever; if it's stolen, it's gone forever; if you pay cash and the merchant swindles you... it's gone forever.

It's cute that you have bought into all those "security" lies, but keep on believing them. All it takes is a single hack to drain your entire debit account or ruin your identity or credit score. Im sure Mastercard, Visa, Discover and AMEX love that your putting free money into their pockets as well as driving up prices for merchandise as retailers "pass on the fees to you".
Any person who has ever taken a Dave Ramsey class can give you infinite reasons why cash is always best.

 

[BruiserB]

Boo, Target!

I cut up my RedCard and told them to cancel it when they first refused ApplePay. I've been shopping there a lot less than I used to.

Walmart's QR Code solution isn't terrible, and if Target copied it, I may use it. But I don't like that it still requires the merchant to have my actual card number on file in their systems instead of getting a tokenized number on each transaction. I also don't like the idea of having separate apps for each store's payment system and each having their own idiosyncrasies on how to use.

I love that ApplePay is consistent with all retailers that accept it and that it offers additional security over store based payment methods. I would have nothing against Target putting their RedCard into ApplePay and/or offering ApplePay based loyalty tracking that I can choose to opt in to for further savings (like Walgreens/Kohls have done). Why can't they just get it right?

 

[sudo1996]

I don't understand the QR-based payment systems. I tried it at Wal-Mart once, but why would I use a system that is actually LESS convenient than popping a card in the chip reader?

Apple Pay is awesome though. Wave the watch over the reader, and done.

I find that the card is already the most convenient. You just put it in and wait a little. Maybe it's a bit slower than Apple Pay (IDK though, some say that's slow on the watch), but it's simpler because all large stores accept it. I'd rather not bother setting Apple Pay up and have to think about which places accept it. And I can talk to the cashier for the 10 seconds it takes to read the credit card.

 

[satchmo]

It's a sad store anyways. Everything is out of stock and you can't even ship items from their online store.

 

[Gizmotoy]

No, I'm talking about purchases that don't require a signature, so under $50. You insert the card and it says "Processing, do not remove card" For at least 15 seconds. Thats not an exaggeration. Our readers must be different than those in Canada and Europe. We don't have to wait for the card to be released, we just need to wait for the transaction to process and that is what takes so dang long.

They do seem glacially slow to the user.

That said, I'm not sure they're actually any slower. We used to swipe and be able to put the card away and start doing other things while the cashier sat there and stared at the terminal until the charge went through and they could give you your receipt.

They've just moved the "responsibility" for waiting onto you, the user. It's probably not actually making you wait any longer, but it does make it substantially more annoying to wait.

 

[Mlrollin91]

They do seem glacially slow to the user.

That said, I'm not sure they're actually any slower. We used to swipe and be able to put the card away and start doing other things while the cashier sat there and stared at the terminal until the charge went through and they could give you your receipt.

They've just moved the "responsibility" for waiting onto you, the user. It's probably not actually making you wait any longer, but it does make it substantially more annoying to wait.

But it doesn't take 15 seconds to swipe a card. Again, its no exaggeration, I have counted many times (because I have nothing better to do while waiting for my payment to be processed). And before, you could swipe the card while things were still be scanned, then as soon as the cashier clicked total, you were literally done. Now you can insert the card while things are being scanned, but it does not begin to process until they click total. So overall, the systems that are being used in the US is slower than before.

You can tell every time a retailer switches to a chip reader over magnetic swipe, because checkout lines get longer and slower.

 

[ohio.emt]

I don't understand the QR-based payment systems. I tried it at Wal-Mart once, but why would I use a system that is actually LESS convenient than popping a card in the chip reader?

Apple Pay is awesome though. Wave the watch over the reader, and done.

I've been using Walmart pay for awhile now. I find it faster then using my chipped card. The nice thing is it auto uploads the receipt to their savings catcher program. No longer have to hope your receipt prints out decently so you can scan the bar code.

 

[jonnyb098]

This is about the dumbest thing ive read all morning? please to explain why you would change all your life shopping to a store that used Apple pay? Unless your getting a kickback or something, all your doing is giving apple even more money and driving up costs of products for the rest of us.
FYI, just use cash. It works EVERYWHERE!

Apple Pay has become a huge convenience for me. The only stores left I would like to be able to use it are Kroger and Target.....both of which are being obnoxious by not allowing it. Kroger makes no sense since their loyalty card is a separate thing to scan.

But Target is a different story. Their card is a joke.....5% doesn't even cover the sales tax where I live.

Using chip cards has become a large annoyance as many dont get how they work and payments take anywhere from 20-30 seconds to even process.

Apple Pay is literally an amazing thing when you get used to it. Its faster then dealing with cash, cards, etc.

 

[44267547]

Inserting the card to read the chip is incredibly slow. Much slower than swiping the card.

I agree with @macfacts. "Incredibly slow" seems like an exaggeration in some respects. The terminals in my area are more than fast enough to process my payment from the chip.

It could depend on the connection speed from the terminal host to the bank. Either way, in my area, inserting my card is faster than swiping my card. It's no comparison. Again, it. It depends on certain aspects and experiences vary. But you can't speak for every transaction experience with a chip.

 

[IJ Reilly]

No, I'm talking about purchases that don't require a signature, so under $50. You insert the card and it says "Processing, do not remove card" For at least 15 seconds. Thats not an exaggeration. Our readers must be different than those in Canada and Europe. We don't have to wait for the card to be released, we just need to wait for the transaction to process and that is what takes so dang long.

I'm not so sure it's as different as it may seem. With a swipe, the cashier still has to wait for bank approval before completing the sale, but you've already put the card back in your wallet, so you feel done. The chip reader makes you wait for approval before removing it. This two-motion process probably only seems like it takes longer. I've used chip cards outside of the U.S. and I don't remember it being faster than it is here, except that elsewhere the PIN cards didn't require a paper receipt and signature, which I had to provide with my dumb American chip card.

 

[EricNau]

It's cute that you have bought into all those "security" lies, but keep on believing them. All it takes is a single hack to drain your entire debit account or ruin your identity or credit score. Im sure Mastercard, Visa, Discover and AMEX love that your putting free money into their pockets as well as driving up prices for merchandise as retailers "pass on the fees to you".
Any person who has ever taken a Dave Ramsey class can give you infinite reasons why cash is always best.

This simply is not true. One "hack" can be a hassle (as Target demonstrated for us), but it cannot ruin your credit score. And if you're using a credit card, it can't empty your bank account, either. On the other hand, if cash is lost/stolen, that's not reversible.

Dave Ramsey isn't in the business of providing advice that's useful to this discussion. His entire rational is based on the assumption that people spend more responsibility when they pay with cash; it's an over generalization and leads to bad advice (like when he says to use debit cards over credit). When it comes to credit cards that man needs a tin foil hat.

 

[Mlrollin91]

I agree with @macfacts. "Incredibly slow" seems like an exaggeration in some respects. The terminals in my area are more than fast enough to process my payment from the chip.

It could depend on the connection speed from the terminal host to the bank. Either way, in my area, inserting my card is faster than swiping my card. It's no comparison. Again, it. It depends on certain aspects and experiences vary. But you can't speak for every transaction experience with a chip.

There is no way in my area that the chip is faster than a swipe. Not even close. At every retailer near me, they use the same machine. It takes 15 seconds for the chip to process. No joke.

 

[jonnyb098]

Not sure why Starbucks, Kohls and many others that happen to have loyalty programs can accept Apple Pay but Target refuses to.

 

[Mlrollin91]

I'm not so sure it's as different as it may seem. With a swipe, the cashier still has to wait for bank approval before completing the sale, but you've already put the card back in your wallet, so you feel done. The chip reader makes you wait for approval before removing it. This two-motion process probably only seems like it takes longer. I've used chip cards outside of the U.S. and I don't remember it being faster than it is here, except that elsewhere the PIN cards didn't require a paper receipt and signature, which I had to provide with my dumb American chip card.

But it does not take 15 seconds for the swipe and processing to occur, maybe 5-10. The chip takes 15 seconds at Target. Its not a joke, that is how long it takes.

 

[coolfactor]

Target is a junk dealer. No loss.

 

[coolbreeze]

This is a bummer I was planning on switching all my shopping needs to Target when I first heard they were going to accept Apple Pay. I just thought my local store hadn't switched yet, I didn't realize they were only going to use it in the app. Guess I'll stay shopping at Walmart and Walgreens

Wait, you won't shop there because you can't hold your phone to the terminal to pay? That sounds petty af.

 

[44267547]

There is no way in my area that the chip is faster than a swipe. Not even close.

As previously stated, in your area and experiences vary. You were speaking in your previous posts as if all terminal hosts are processing chip payments as slow, when Macfacts and I stated otherwise. That was my point. I'm not contesting your area.

 

[ohio.emt]

I'm not so sure it's as different as it may seem. With a swipe, the cashier still has to wait for bank approval before completing the sale, but you've already put the card back in your wallet, so you feel done. The chip reader makes you wait for approval before removing it. This two-motion process probably only seems like it takes longer. I've used chip cards outside of the U.S. and I don't remember it being faster than it is here, except that elsewhere the PIN cards didn't require a paper receipt and signature, which I had to provide with my dumb American chip card.

Who is still doing chip and sign. I've only had to do that a couple of time when they first started really big push to use the chip. For me now it's been a pin number or noting if it's not that high of a transaction. I'm wondering if it's not a retailer thing instead of banks. Since when switch first started I had to do signatures but only at certain retails others excepted the pin.

 

[Mlrollin91]

As previously stated, in your area and experiences vary. You were speaking in your previous posts as if all terminal hosts are processing chip payments as slow, when Macfacts and I stated otherwise. That was my point. I'm not contesting your area.

No, I countered immediately to Macfacts stating Canada and Europe must be using different readers than the US. Every retailer that I have been to in the US (coast to coast) uses the same machine/company.

This machine here is the most common one across the entire country. http://www.verifone.com/products/hardware/multimedia/mx-915/

But every chip reader is the same company.

For the record, macfacts was also referring to 'tap to pay' which is not the same thing as inserting a chip.

 

[Robert.Walter]

Too bad for you Target, you opened up space for your competition.

Our family shops more at Meijer's and Kohls than Target anymore. We still shop at Costco and we're happy to hear that they might turn on their NFC POS terminals by the end of the quarter!