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Why wouldn’t everywhere be supporting contactless payments by this point? And that’s not me being snippy, because perplexingly, Mariano’s, a grocery store chai

Why wouldn’t everywhere be supporting contactless payments by this point? And that’s not me being snippy, because perplexingly, Mariano’s, a grocery store chain in Chicago owned by Kroger’s, does not support NFC payments. (I assume Kroger’s stores proper don’t either.) You have to swipe, use the chip, or use the dedicated Kroger Pay app to scan a QR code to use your digital wallet. (Yes, really. Took them forever to even support chips instead of magstripes.) I have absolutely no idea why they do this. Is there a higher interchange fee for contactless? Kroger’s isn’t some mom-and-pop convenience store—they’re the largest supermarket company by revenue.

paxys 5y ago
Because these chains have decades old point of sales systems which no one wants to touch. It isn't simply a matter of swapping out one card reader for another.
- yakz 5y ago
  They did swap out all of the payment terminals, though. Just for ones without that functionality. However, I could believe that they selected the hardware because they were stuck with choices that were compatible with other systems. Kroger is a big company with quite a lot of resources, though.
- leesalminen 5y ago
  Kroger brand stores have terminals that support contactless. Their self checkout lanes get new hardware and/or software every couple of years. I’ve worked with many payment gateways over the years and enabling contactless on a stack that already did EMV never required a code change on the POS system. The terminal just passes the same data along to the POS. I’m convinced there’s some fees at play here. The standout to me is how they push Kroger Pay - that’s to save on processing fees.
yakz 5y ago
I've been shopping at Kroger regularly for decades and my guess is that it might have something to do with the timing around their last major payment terminal upgrade. They upgraded before NFC payments were very popular but fairly close to when they really needed to support chip cards (my recollection was that the payment networks were saying they would no longer insure against fraud without a chip terminal), and it seems like for whatever reason they went with a terminal that didn't support it. I remember being annoyed with seeing all of the seemingly brand-new hardware being installed at multiple locations that very obviously lacked NFC payment support.
pitterpatter 5y ago
The QFC (which is Kroger's AFAIK) near me finally started allowing NFC payments sometime in 2020. Part of me wonders if covid and wanting less contact motivated that because the actual terminals themselves didn't change but rather they just enabled the NFC functionality.

paxys 5y ago

Because these chains have decades old point of sales systems which no one wants to touch. It isn't simply a matter of swapping out one card reader for another.

yakz 5y ago
They did swap out all of the payment terminals, though. Just for ones without that functionality. However, I could believe that they selected the hardware because they were stuck with choices that were compatible with other systems. Kroger is a big company with quite a lot of resources, though.
leesalminen 5y ago
Kroger brand stores have terminals that support contactless. Their self checkout lanes get new hardware and/or software every couple of years. I’ve worked with many payment gateways over the years and enabling contactless on a stack that already did EMV never required a code change on the POS system. The terminal just passes the same data along to the POS. I’m convinced there’s some fees at play here. The standout to me is how they push Kroger Pay - that’s to save on processing fees.

yakz 5y ago

I've been shopping at Kroger regularly for decades and my guess is that it might have something to do with the timing around their last major payment terminal upgrade. They upgraded before NFC payments were very popular but fairly close to when they really needed to support chip cards (my recollection was that the payment networks were saying they would no longer insure against fraud without a chip terminal), and it seems like for whatever reason they went with a terminal that didn't support it. I remember being annoyed with seeing all of the seemingly brand-new hardware being installed at multiple locations that very obviously lacked NFC payment support.

pitterpatter 5y ago

The QFC (which is Kroger's AFAIK) near me finally started allowing NFC payments sometime in 2020. Part of me wonders if covid and wanting less contact motivated that because the actual terminals themselves didn't change but rather they just enabled the NFC functionality.