Major Retailers that Support NFC Payments

[MisterSavage]

Do you not have contactless bank cards as standard and general contactless limits for them in the US?

Half of the credit cards in my wallet have contactless. A year or two ago Chase was running a promotion to encourage people to try it but awarding $10 (?) if you made a handful of purchases with tap to pay.

 

[AZhappyjack]

This "what places take Apple Pay" thread seems crazy to me being from the UK. Although I guess the subtleties may lie in the spending limits that apply. Do you not have contactless bank cards as standard and general contactless limits for them in the US?

In the UK if anywhere has a card reader it'll 99.99% likely to take NFC (I haven't seen a non-NFC one for a few years now). Everyone uses contactless with their bank cards for lower value payments, which used to have a £20 or £30 limit, but is often now £80 or £100 since covid. If it takes NFC it'll pretty much be guaranteed to take Apple and Google pay up to this base-level contactless limit because everyone uses their phone to pay for everything because it's 2022!

The only limitation is whether the place has a standard >£30 or >£80 contactless limit and so you can't use Apple Pay if above that limit as you have to require card insertion+PIN if greater than that. But some don't and take the full card limit due to the biometrics (or PIN/removal sensing of the watch).

So I guess the point here is that maybe an actual minority of places take *full* Apple pay. But I can do things like my weekly shop using it (big brand store usually = full Apple Pay) and everywhere else from every bar in town that isn't cash-only (which is pretty much all of them) to bus/train tickets to London Underground, to small market stalls and anything general, I'm probably under £40 or £80 anyway, so still works. Some small businesses don't take cash these days because it's a security liability from a burglary perspective and a PITA to take money back and forth to banks/have a till float etc. This then had covid and not wanting to touch stuff unneccesarily too making it the defacto way to pay. So a lot of them do have full Apple Pay higher spend limits than they used to.

If I'm going shopping I'm likely to have my wallet anyway, but I can happily go out to a gig or few drinks with friends and never need to use my card. Thinking about it the little craft beer bar near me we usually get a tab and with enough nice fancy beer we can get that tab easily up to maybe £70+ and watch or phone always works and I've never even thought about it and what the limit is or isn't. It's almost annoying if I have to get my wallet out for some kinda loyalty card scan/swipe since I seldom ever do to pay! (which reminds me I need to go to the app store as I think co-op have a new app so I can use my co-op card out the wallet of my apple watch like the Tesco one now)

I just got back from Glastonbury Festival in England with 250,000+ people in the middle of the countryside on a dairy farm. Apart from a couple of bars which were cash only due to having no card readers and cellular signal to run them off, absolutely every single other bar and shop on the whole site took ApplePay and Google Pay at least up to a limit of more than any round of drinks I bought! And that's on a farm in the middle of the countryside (although admittedly with a lot of extra temporary 4G/3G base stations to give enough cellular coverage for everyone)!

The short answer to your question is "no". Many banks offer "contactless" cards, but the issue is the retailers' acceptance. Some do accept contactless payment (via phone, watch, card), but many offer some but not all of the options... there's a few places that I've seen lately that have stripe / chip reader devices who have the chip reader slot blocked (tape, cardboard insert) requiring the old-fashioned swipe process for all debit and credit card transactions. And others like the Kroger grocery chain (and all of their subsidiary brands), Walmart and others are hell-bent on promoting their own brand of payment systems.

Only recently have I been able to purchase gasoline ("petrol" for folks across the pond) without swiping my credit/debit card.

 

[tmiw]

The short answer to your question is "no". Many banks offer "contactless" cards, but the issue is the retailers' acceptance. Some do accept contactless payment (via phone, watch, card), but many offer some but not all of the options... there's a few places that I've seen lately that have stripe / chip reader devices who have the chip reader slot blocked (tape, cardboard insert) requiring the old-fashioned swipe process for all debit and credit card transactions. And others like the Kroger grocery chain (and all of their subsidiary brands), Walmart and others are hell-bent on promoting their own brand of payment systems.

Only recently have I been able to purchase gasoline ("petrol" for folks across the pond) without swiping my credit/debit card.

Personally, I'm jaded about the whole thing now given how it took the possibility of being infected by/dying from a serious illness to even get a lot of Americans to consider using/accepting contactless in the first place. And certain parts of that didn't even stick, either (for instance, many of the drive thrus around here actually started handing the terminal out the window back in ~2020 only to go back to inserting cards for customers a year or two later).

That said, I did have a pretty good run recently with restaurants using terminals they brought to the table, even though all but one did still insert cards for customers (and only let patrons touch the terminal for tip/signature). All except the one that let me use contactless used Toast (the contactless accepting one was using Clover), if that helps.

 

[lartola]

This "what places take Apple Pay" thread seems crazy to me being from the UK. Although I guess the subtleties may lie in the spending limits that apply. Do you not have contactless bank cards as standard and general contactless limits for them in the US?

In the UK if anywhere has a card reader it'll 99.99% likely to take NFC (I haven't seen a non-NFC one for a few years now). Everyone uses contactless with their bank cards for lower value payments, which used to have a £20 or £30 limit, but is often now £80 or £100 since covid. If it takes NFC it'll pretty much be guaranteed to take Apple and Google pay up to this base-level contactless limit because everyone uses their phone to pay for everything because it's 2022!

The only limitation is whether the place has a standard >£30 or >£80 contactless limit and so you can't use Apple Pay if above that limit as you have to require card insertion+PIN if greater than that. But some don't and take the full card limit due to the biometrics (or PIN/removal sensing of the watch).

So I guess the point here is that maybe an actual minority of places take *full* Apple pay. But I can do things like my weekly shop using it (big brand store usually = full Apple Pay) and everywhere else from every bar in town that isn't cash-only (which is pretty much all of them) to bus/train tickets to London Underground, to small market stalls and anything general, I'm probably under £40 or £80 anyway, so still works. Some small businesses don't take cash these days because it's a security liability from a burglary perspective and a PITA to take money back and forth to banks/have a till float etc. This then had covid and not wanting to touch stuff unneccesarily too making it the defacto way to pay. So a lot of them do have full Apple Pay higher spend limits than they used to.

If I'm going shopping I'm likely to have my wallet anyway, but I can happily go out to a gig or few drinks with friends and never need to use my card. Thinking about it the little craft beer bar near me we usually get a tab and with enough nice fancy beer we can get that tab easily up to maybe £70+ and watch or phone always works and I've never even thought about it and what the limit is or isn't. It's almost annoying if I have to get my wallet out for some kinda loyalty card scan/swipe since I seldom ever do to pay! (which reminds me I need to go to the app store as I think co-op have a new app so I can use my co-op card out the wallet of my apple watch like the Tesco one now)

I just got back from Glastonbury Festival in England with 250,000+ people in the middle of the countryside on a dairy farm. Apart from a couple of bars which were cash only due to having no card readers and cellular signal to run them off, absolutely every single other bar and shop on the whole site took ApplePay and Google Pay at least up to a limit of more than any round of drinks I bought! And that's on a farm in the middle of the countryside (although admittedly with a lot of extra temporary 4G/3G base stations to give enough cellular coverage for everyone)!

I’ll make it simple for you: in this thread what places take apple pay = what places take contactless. As simple as that. Since contactless cards didn’t take off in the US back in the day, merchants there didn’t enable contactless for years. Now they are doing so after several years because mobile wallets became popular and contactless cards are making a come back. That means, believe it or not, there are still places in the US that don’t take any contactless payments at all and one must pay by inserting the card or swiping it (yes, they still swipe sometimes in the US!). Some because they lack the hardware and others such as Walmart or Home Depot because they simply refuse.

 

[echopulse]

The USPS webpage now says they accept Apple/Google Pay. Has anyone been able to use it at their Post Office? I tried at mine to no avail. They had a self service machine that had the NFC reader but when I tried to buy a book of stamps it didn't work.

 

[tmiw]

The USPS webpage now says they accept Apple/Google Pay. Has anyone been able to use it at their Post Office? I tried at mine to no avail. They had a self service machine that had the NFC reader but when I tried to buy a book of stamps it didn't work.

My local post office is still insert/swipe only even at the counter.

 

[MisterSavage]

I switched to a new dentist and one benefit I already like is that I can pay with Apple Pay!

 

[AZhappyjack]

The USPS webpage now says they accept Apple/Google Pay. Has anyone been able to use it at their Post Office? I tried at mine to no avail. They had a self service machine that had the NFC reader but when I tried to buy a book of stamps it didn't work.

I did a few weeks back. Freaked them out with Apple pay on my watch.

 

[tmiw]

I did a few weeks back. Freaked them out with Apple pay on my watch.

Do you recall what they use at the counters now? (Or are supposed to be using, anyway.) Perhaps it's just a slow rollout if it's only coming as part of them swapping out hardware.

 

[lartola]

Do you recall what they use at the counters now? (Or are supposed to be using, anyway.) Perhaps it's just a slow rollout if it's only coming as part of them swapping out hardware.

Just as long as they don’t stop the rollout like Office Depot in Mexico did. They upgraded to mx925 pinpads in 3 or 4 stores throughout the country in 2021 and then stopped. They haven’t upgraded a single other store in over a year including the 7 stores in my city. The remaining stores all have ingenico ipp320s and don’t accept contactless/apple pay at all, just insert or swipe (no idea, though, if they just don’t want to enable nfc on the ipp320s or they can’t because they bought them without the nfc antenna).

So long as USPS doesn’t do that, great.

 

[AZhappyjack]

Do you recall what they use at the counters now? (Or are supposed to be using, anyway.) Perhaps it's just a slow rollout if it's only coming as part of them swapping out hardware.

Sorry, no, I don't. I was in a hurry and just saw the contactless logo on the reader and tapped it with my watch.

 

[compwiz1202]

I did a few weeks back. Freaked them out with Apple pay on my watch.

Someone said I was a sorcerer once when I used it on my watch

 

[compwiz1202]

The AMC Theaters we went to didn't take it. Do none take it. I don't understand major companies not taking it barring they are using some proprietary nonsense like Wal~Mart

 

[compwiz1202]

Does AP every work for anyone at Redner's? They're so annoying. They have NFC, but it always gives an instant ! with some error. It's not declining anything because there's no entry in Apple Card Transactions. It always works fine if I put the chip in, and the same happens for other cards in AP, not just the Apple Card.

 

[echopulse]

I have put together a list of the top 100 retailers and marked which ones accept tap payments. There are a few I don't know about, since they are not on the list, and aren't near me. If anyone would like to help me fill in the details I am missing that would be great, the file is editiable.

Top Retailers that don't accept NFC

Sheet1 Retailer,Number of Stores Walmart & Sams Club,5326 The Home Depot,2006 Lowe's,1743 H.E. Butt Grocery,327 WinCo Foods,129 Hobby Lobby Stores,919 RH (Restoration Hardware),119 Fleet Farm,49 Guitar Center,304 Graybar,325 Regal Cinemas,452 Marcus Theaters,90 Paper Source,129 Savers Thrift Sto...

docs.google.com

 

[compwiz1202]

The AMC Theaters we went to didn't take it. Do none take it. I don't understand major companies not taking it barring they are using some proprietary nonsense like Wal~Mart

Also, Marcus Theaters don't take it. Do any Movie Theaters take it?

 

[lartola]

Also, Marcus Theaters don't take it. Do any Movie Theaters take it?

Cinemark theaters do take it.

 

[echopulse]

Also Regal Cinemas take it.

 

[echopulse]

AMC Theaters just announced they are now accepting contactless payments, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be on location, or just in the app.

 

[lartola]

AMC Theaters just announced they are now accepting contactless payments, but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be on location, or just in the app.

If they used the word contactless it must be on site. In the app it would be mobile wallets; it can’t be contactless because it’s an online transaction and nfc isn’t used.

 

[echopulse]

They didn't actually say contactless, but they specifically said Apple/Google Pay, and Paypal, and Venmo. I'll have to find out if they can take some of those on site.

 

[lartola]

They didn't actually say contactless, but they specifically said Apple/Google Pay, and Paypal, and Venmo. I'll have to find out if they can take some of those on site.

Then they probably just meant online, where each of those needs to be individually supported, not on site, where it would be just contactless/tap to pay and supports all in one.

 

[echopulse]

I've seen reports on twitter of people seeing Apple Pay in post offices now. Mine didn't have it the last time I checked, but maybe yours does.

 

[tmiw]

I've seen reports on twitter of people seeing Apple Pay in post offices now. Mine didn't have it the last time I checked, but maybe yours does.

I went to one pretty recently and they still didn't have it (at least at the kiosks). The rollout will probably take a while.

 

[ecschwarz]

Well it still took a long time. As an example of the contrast, here in Mexico since gas stations are staffed in the pumps area they just provided the staff with wireless POS (the same used by restaurants to process payments at the table) many years ago when they wanted to start accepting cards. Over the years, newer models of the wireless POS came setup and ready for contactless, so the change was almost natural. I’ve been using Apple Pay at my local gas station in Mexico for nearly 6 years while americans waited for theirs to upgrade to contactless on the pumps. Even with apple pay not officially rolled out in Mexico, it was easier to use it at gas stations there than in the US. Likewise at restaurants.

Nice! I suspect that would be great for states like New Jersey or most of Oregon where customers aren't allowed to pump their own gas, but I doubt it would happen. Personally, I think it took way too long, especially since it wasn't an overnight decision and would have to be done eventually. Even back in 2014, I was using Apple Pay on the gas pumps at Meijer as they had installed them chainwide at one point, presumably as their store card had contactless. Even with this (or contact EMV at least) being on the horizon for years, it's kind of ridiculous how many places have dragged their feet.