Interesting article from March in the New York Times. Helps explain why so many stores have chip card readers but still are taped over or have signs saying things like "coming soon!" Payment System Delays Frustrate Retailers
Major regional chains I can think of offhand that are ready but not accepting are:
Bi-Mart Stores
New Seasons Markets
I think every Walmart, Target and Fred Meyer store in the Portland area can now accept the EMV cards. Kroger took a little longer than the two retail giants, but seems to be up to speed now. I think Whole Foods is 100% up too. I know Trader Joe's is because you can't use your card until the end of the transaction now (yay, even slower TJ's checkout...)
Well, according to Apple, the systems at ACME, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw's/Star Market can do it (as well as United), but that could just be SuperValu systems at work (Albertsons is listed as "Coming Soon", other SVU chains are also listed, no word on Safeway brands).
On the other hand, from what I've seen at the few Randalls I've visited, there IS a slot for chipped cards, they just don't actually have it activated for use yet. Why? Dunno.
pseudo3d wrote:Well, according to Apple, the systems at ACME, Jewel-Osco, and Shaw's/Star Market can do it (as well as United), but that could just be SuperValu systems at work (Albertsons is listed as "Coming Soon", other SVU chains are also listed, no word on Safeway brands).
On the other hand, from what I've seen at the few Randalls I've visited, there IS a slot for chipped cards, they just don't actually have it activated for use yet. Why? Dunno.
VONS has the chip readers taped over, too. I am going to guess that they either don't want to convert to EMV only to convert to a different EMV system or their acquirer is dragging its feet.
Apple Pay is Near Frequency Communication (NFC). Better known as "tap" or "wave" or "PayPass" or "Express Pay" or "Pay Wave" or "Chase Blink" or "Contactless." There are two types of NFC, there is EMV NFC (this is NOT what the Supervalu system does; the only retailers I have seen who uses EMV NFC in the US are Starbucks and Walgreens, and some scattered small businesses) and there is what most here use which is MSD (magnetic stripe driven) NFC. MSD NFC has been deployed in the US for at least a decade; I remember 10-15 years ago having cards that offered the tap option and used those cards often at 7-11 and the other few merchants who at the time picked up NFC (many of whom quit accepting NFC due to the Current C fiasco but that is for another post).
I do not clearly understand what exactly the difference is between EMV NFC and MSD NFC but supposedly it has something to do with the tracks of data transmitted between the payment card and the payment terminal and the EMV NFC is supposed to be more secure.
This is not the same thing as Contact Chip EMV which is what is referred to as "Insert" and what Wal Mart, Target, Kroger, etc. are doing now. Acme, Shaws, Jewel, and Albertsons on Supervalu systems have been Apple Pay enabled for the past 2 years or so.
Also as Albertsons Stores transition over to the Safeway System, they are disabling NFC so they no longer accept Apple Pay. As is typical when I attempted to contact Albertsons to ask what happened I could get no clear answer other than that they accept Apple Pay only in some stores and they had no clear answer as to if or when they would accept it chainwide. I witnessed this in Elko, NV which accepted it last year but has since moved to the Safeway system and has discontinued acceptance of NFC. Safeway's system supposedly cannot process NFC (yet that same system processed NFC just fine up in Canada 3 years ago... why?). The hardware can process it, it is some kind of software issue.
Kroger had NFC in some scattered store locations turned on and shut it off once they started to use EMV. Why? Again, nobody seems to know the answer to that question. Nobody seems to know if support for it is coming back.
Whole Foods and Trader Joes can support Chip EMV and MSD NFC just fine. Somehow they can do it. So can Rite Aid. So can Office Depot. Why can't Kroger?
The reason there is so much trouble in the US with converting over to EMV is because many US retailers use an integrated system where the payment processing is tied in to the main cash register and as such the entire system has to be certified for data security by some organization known as EMVCo. This has created a lot of certification problems. Many US retailers had the processing hardware in time for the 10/2015 liability shift but their processing companies were not yet certified by EMVCo so they could not turn on their EMV. Most other countries use semi-integrated systems or non-integrated systems and as such the only thing that needs to be certified is the payment processing option not the entire system. This is also why EMV is so painfully slow to process in the US and processes very quickly in most other countries that use it.
Also to go back to the above point: for retailers to process EMV NFC there is a second separate certification that they have to undertake. That certification in addition to the certification to process Chip EMV. More time, more costs. With all the trouble retailers here had to get certified for Chip EMV it appears undertaking certification for EMV NFC is a bit trying...
The irony is EMV NFC processes fast. I mean, super fast. Like in 1-2 seconds you tap and you are done. Had this been put into place in the first place (and more NFC cards issued in the US; the card issuers largely quit issuing the cards about 3-5 years ago due to limited usage since so few merchants installed the NFC readers back then; Apple Pay is what has pushed a ton of merchants to install the readers) I think it would have been a much more smooth transition. The most common complaint of EMV Chip users is the transaction takes too long and they don't like keeping their card in the terminal. Well, with NFC you just tap the card and you are done, even easier than swiping.
The new Citi Costco Visa cards offer the NFC option so those can be tapped. I don't know if Costco has NFC turned on though...?
Now what some retailers have been doing is switching to a semi-integrated system in the US in order to get EMV going. This is what Starbucks has done. This is why the Starbucks that have converted to EMV now give you two receipts if you pay with a card. This is actually the same exact system they use up in Canada. Safeway Canada (used the same IBM/Toshiba system as they use in the US) did the same thing so I think they went to a semi-integrated set up in Canada to make EMV work too. I am curious why more US retailers have not, at least in the interim, gone to a semi-integrated or non-integrated set up to avoid the liability shift and get easier certification.
The US has completely botched the conversion to EMV. It is, frankly, a fiasco. I think there is a lot of blame to spread around to all parties involved.
Here are a couple of receipts showing a purchase using a physical credit card with a contactless EMV chip and then using the same card account linked to Apple Pay. Both were "tapped" on the card reader, contactless. Note the one with a physical card/contactless EMV chip processed as an EMV Contactless transaction while the Apple Pay transaction is processed as a MSD Contactless transaction.
Starbucks is one of few US Merchants who has EMV Contactless. Walgreens is another. Most run all as MSD Contactless. You can tell if it is processed as EMV Contactless or MSD Contactless because the EMV one has an AID on the receipt while the MSD does not.
My local Safeway in the San Francisco Bay Area has turned on the chip card readers at their credit card terminals. This is the first time that I have seen them turned on at a Safeway supermarket. It was somewhat slower than swiping a credit card, but the wait was not more than about 1 minute. I heard that Safeway discovered skimmers on credit card readers at stores in my city. That is probably the only reason why Safeway would even bother turning the chip card readers on. They are so behind in technology. In my area, CVS has been using chip card readers for several months at least. Walgreens also has had them. Raley's is not using them as far as I know. Lunardi's has been using Apple Pay for a while along with chip card readers.
Alpha8472 wrote:My local Safeway in the San Francisco Bay Area has turned on the chip card readers at their credit card terminals. This is the first time that I have seen them turned on at a Safeway supermarket. It was somewhat slower than swiping a credit card, but the wait was not more than about 1 minute. I heard that Safeway discovered skimmers on credit card readers at stores in my city. That is probably the only reason why Safeway would even bother turning the chip card readers on. They are so behind in technology. In my area, CVS has been using chip card readers for several months at least. Walgreens also has had them. Raley's is not using them as far as I know. Lunardi's has been using Apple Pay for a while along with chip card readers.
Raley's has them installed but was focused on getting Apple Pay back up and running before the chip readers.
There is no excuse for why Safeway does not have Chip card acceptance chainwide yet.
Winn Dixie has the same exact register software and hardware as Safeway and has Chip card acceptance for months now. Winn Dixie. Not exactly known to be a chain on the cutting edge of anything.
A number of Safeway locations do not even have pinpads installed yet that can read chip cards. The trend I have noticed is if a Safeway location has self checkout, it has not yet received new cash registers (which work much more slowly than the old registers) or new pinpads. They are the ONLY retailer I know of (other than gas stations which are not liable until 10/2017 for fraud) who has not installed chip card reading equipment in all locations.
Retailers without chip card readers will no longer shoulder the cost of fraudulent transactions under $25. There will be a maximum of 10 chargebacks for transactions over $25 on a counterfeit card.
Now there is even less motivation to install chip card readers.
While they are installed, H-E-B doesn't have the chip cards enabled. They almost single-handedly run the grocery show (sans Walmart and the occasional Whole Foods/ALDI/independent) in Waco and San Antonio, run neck to neck to Kroger in Houston, and beat Randalls in Houston by a wide margin. Even in United-controlled territory they still pull in far better volumes than United's stores generally do.
Just to show you that Safeway isn't the only weird one here.
