Drugstores Rite Aid and CVS ditch Apple Pay in favor of a new mobile payments system

[Himanshu Arora]

Less than a week after Apple Pay went live, two of the country's largest drugstore chains have stopped accepting payments made through the system.

Drug retailer Rite Aid blocked the service, and on Saturday CVS Health followed suit at its pharmacy stores. The retailers, however, weren't in the list of those specifically named as supporting Apple Pay when the Cupertino-based company revealed the payments system last month.

In fact, both retailers have shut down the NFC payment terminals that were installed in their stores, blocking not only Apple Pay, but also Google Wallet as well as other contactless cards. The move stems from the fact that the companies are part of a consortium of retailers called the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) that is already working on its own mobile payment system aimed at enabling the merchants to avoid paying transaction fees to credit card companies.

Slashgear published a leaked internal memo last week in which Rite Aid confirmed that it's focusing on a rival mobile wallet. "Please note that we do not accept Apple Pay at this time. However we are currently working with a group of large retailers to develop a mobile wallet that allows for mobile payments attached to credit cards and bank accounts directly from a smart phone".

Dubbed CurrentC, MCX's new mobile payment network isn’t based on NFC, but instead relies on QR codes that both customers as well as sales associates scan to confirm a transaction. The system is expected to become available in the first half of 2015.

Aside from Rite Aid and CVS, other members of the consortium include major retailers like Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, Target, and many others.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/58581-drugstores-rite-aid-cvs-ditch-apple-pay-favor.html

 

[seefizzle]

This is a bad move and will be met with backlash. CVS and RiteAid will reverse this decision shortly.

For the record, the pin pads can only be on or off. They can't be on for google wallet and off for apple pay. The pin pads themselves aren't able to make that distinction. When you use NFC, you are transferring the same information as when you swipe your card. The pin pad doesn't distinguish any difference between swiping or NFC, it just passes the data along to the POS system.

These companies are literally turning off a feature of their pin pads in order to force CurrenC down our throats.

The reason why they're trying to force this CurrenC nonsense is because they don't want to pay credit card swipe fees.

We as consumers shouldn't give a rat's a$$ whether or not a retailer incurs credit card swipe fees. Nor should we jump ship to a QR code based payment system linked directly to our bank accounts using ACH to transfer funds. There are as many problems with this kind of payment system as there are with mag stripe transactions. I don't know about you, but CurrenC sounds stupid.

Retailers will soon find that consumers aren't interested in their goofy form of payment.

 

[Guest17]

I've never had a problem at CVS or Rite-Aid using AppleCash. It works every time.

 

[Jim$ter]

Not anymore Guest17. CurrentC will die a a quick death. Or at least I hope. Till then I will be using credit cards the old fashion way which is sad. I wanted to try out Apple Pay. Owell, always greedy dumb people out in the world that doesn't think of consumers just the bottom line.

 

[Guest]

I find that cash works great at all brick and mortar retailers. Accepted everywhere, no fees, no hassles...

 

[RobertLee2000]

I will never trust Retailers with this kind of information....I much prefer a single transaction code through Apple.

 

[Guest]

And you trust Apple to make your data or transaction safe?! Ask Kate Upton how well that worked out?