Apple Pay Website Updated to Suggest Some Partners May Not Make 2014 Rollout Goal

BTW, Albertson's (per se) isn't really buying Safeway. It's Albertson's owner company, Cerberus Capital Management (a private equity firm) that is buying Safeway/Vons. The deal is expected to close next month. The FTC is requiring Cerberus to divest itself of about 168 stores between the two companies. In our area (San Diego County), 17 Albertson's and 8 Vons stores are being sold to Haggen Food (a grocery company based in Washington state).

Some people don't have the luxury of running up a credit card bill and then paying it off in full each month. I've given up traditional credit cards and only use pre-paid credit cards that I load up with my own money (instantly though my bank for free). Some banks combine debit and credit cards into one and allow it to function as either, drawing from the same pool of cash, which is awesome.

I just wish that they could get Target (stores) onboard with  Pay. I thought that Target already has contactless payment machines in stores, so why would they not choose to support  pay?

Someone had posted that CVS was now accepting Apple Pay on another thread. I tried it out Sunday and found that it was not true.

I don't know (actually doubt) if your conspiracy theory is correct. However, I do wish these companies either, roll out CurrentC, or Apple Pay very soon. My guess is that when they do either Apple Pay will win. The fact that they turn off NFC and basically have zero answer for contactless payment is ridiculous.

Even if you haven't handed over your details and product preferences through a loyalty scheme, it's likely you have used a debit or credit card to pay for your shopping at some point – and this is another way that the supermarkets can track what we buy.

"We know that an anonymised card number paid for a particular basket of groceries one week and how much was spent with the same card number the following week," says a Morrisons spokesperson. "It means we know when customers are lapsing because we won't see their card for a week. We use it to measure the effectiveness of promotions and events."

A RBS Visa debit card being handed to a shop assistant
Supermarkets can use your card details to learn more about you. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian
When asked whether its customers give permission for their card numbers to be tracked in this way, the supermarket says customers "would only need to opt in" if Morrisons intended to send them any form of communication.

"All the large grocers track payment cards in this way," says Matthew Harrop at data analysis firm emnos. "All your till receipts are linked together using either a known customer identifier – or anonymously in the absence of a loyalty card – to analyse what you're buying and how loyal you are."

Waitrose and Asda also admit analysing aggregated payment card data to monitor "customer shopping patterns" (for example, items purchased) over time. Both stress this is common practice in the retail industry and that card numbers are not connected to an individual or an address. Sainsbury's and Tesco say they do not track or monitor their customers' payment cards.

The supermarkets also want to find out what their customers are doing outside their stores. Waitrose, for example, paid data analytics firm Beyond Analysis to use "aggregated and anonymised data" about shoppers' Visa card transactions to help it decide on new store locations.

Beyond Analysis integrated the Visa transaction data with Waitrose's own data to figure out what proportion of potential customers were buying groceries from other supermarkets, and the general locations of these competitors.

A Waitrose spokesperson says the supermarket would never see details about an individual customer's spending – the data would only show broad trends. Along with Visa, the supermarket emphasises that the work fully complied with the Data Protection Act. Beyond Analysis refused to comment and Waitrose says it no longer works with the firm.

However, both MasterCard and Beyond Analysis still offer data analytics services to UK retailers - which means anonymised, aggregated information about what we are all spending on our credit and debit cards and where we are spending it is potentially up for grabs to the highest bidder.

They choose to partner with CurrentC.

I just wish that they could get Target (stores) onboard with  Pay. I thought that Target already has contactless payment machines in stores, so why would they not choose to support  pay?

Because storing those one time use tokens does nothing for their internal tracking algorithms.

Must be an echo in here. I said the exact same thing in the post right before this one.

I was doing Christmas shopping at my area mall, and I was surprised that most of the retailers there have no NFC capability at all. I did use it at Macy's. Apple's own implementation of Apple Pay is interesting: NFC is built into the swipe-card case attached to the iPod Touch the associates carry. Those were the only two stores in the entire mall where I saw NFC.

Now if only more local banks would get on board with Apple Pay so I can use it with my debit card...

I just wish that they could get Target (stores) onboard with  Pay. I thought that Target already has contactless payment machines in stores, so why would they not choose to support  pay?