Does Rite Aid Take Apple Pay? Rite Aid is a popular chain of retail stores with a wide selection of items including groceries, household supplies and pharmaceuticals. The store has a large online presence and customers can order prescription medications, vitamins and supplements, and other health products and services from the website. Customers can also purchase gifts and other merchandise through the online store. Some of the most popular items sold through the site include gifts for newborns, weddings, and birthdays.
Does Rite Aid Accept Apple Pay?
Yes, Rite Aid does take (accept) Apple pay.
The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium includes some of the biggest retailers in the US. Walmart, Best Buy, Rite Aid, Target, Sears, Walgreens, and Duane Reade are among the members.
The group’s product, called CurrentC, is a mobile payment system based on QR codes. It will allow customers to scan a QR code on their smartphone, and then make a payment with their debit or credit card. This will be available in 110,000 locations, and consumers will be able to choose from several financial accounts.
MCX is a coalition of high-volume retailers that have come together to solve the problem of card swipe fees. Visa and MasterCard take a 1.51% processing fee for each transaction. Those merchants believe that they can save consumers money by charging lower fees.
MCX has been accused of overstepping its bounds and ignoring consumer interests. The group is backed by some of the biggest retailers in the country, and it has negotiated multi-year agreements. Some members have made up-front payments of $2000-$500,000.
However, there have been few details about the actual rollout of CurrentC. MCX is a group of retail partners that will work together to create an alternative payment process, and they have significant bargaining power.
Google’s revamped Android Pay
Google’s revamped Android Pay will launch this Thursday. The system is designed to allow mobile payments at participating retailers. It will be available on most phones with NFC.
While the new system will not be available for app purchases, it will support four major credit cards. These include Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. And the company is adding more cards to the list all the time.
Rite Aid, one of the nation’s largest drug stores, announced it will support Android Pay when the service launches. The company plans to offer the service in nearly 4,600 locations in 31 states. In fact, it is already re-enabled contactless payment terminals.
Google’s updated mobile payments system will work in conjunction with Android 4.4 KitKat and will support tap and pay. It will also support debit card information. This technology is similar to Apple’s Apple Pay.
But Google’s original payments platform had little to offer. While it made a splash in the fall of 2013, the company’s previous mobile payments system did not gain much traction.
Now, Google has decided to take another shot at building a mobile wallet. Android Pay uses NFC technology to transmit payments to point-of-sale systems at physical stores.
Face ID or PIN
Rite Aid has been quietly installing facial recognition cameras at stores across the country, but it has not disclosed the locations where the technology is used. Reuters has investigated several Rite Aid stores in Manhattan and found that eight of the 10 stores that had the highest percentage of customers who were white had cameras installed.
Rite Aid also had FaceFirst technology installed in two of the stores. This system generated 500 hits per hour when photos were blurry and taken at odd angles.
The cameras, which were attached to poles at the store entrances, sent alerts to security agents’ smartphones. These agents reviewed matches and verified their accuracy before adding people to a watch list.
Several employees at Rite Aid declined to comment on the facial recognition program. They spoke on the condition of anonymity. But after a Reuters report, the company said it has stopped using the software.
One of its former vice presidents of asset protection told Reuters that the program was rolled out in lower income neighborhoods to deter shoplifting and protect staff. However, some critics say that the program was poorly planned.
Reuters discovered that at least one of the companies involved with the facial recognition technology was a Chinese company. It is unknown how much information is gathered by the China-linked firm, but it could help the government keep tabs on individuals around the world.
