Popular retailer Walgreens today announced that its Balance Rewards loyalty program can now be linked with Apple Pay and used by its customers across the country. The partnership will allow Apple Pay users to link their Balance Rewards card with the mobile payments service so they can earn and redeem loyalty points without having to scan their physical Walgreens card. Following Kohl's launch of Apple Pay support for its store-branded credit card, Walgreens is the first retailer to support a loyalty rewards program within Apple Pay.
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“We’re excited to be the first to provide our customers with increased ease of access to their Balance Rewards account and information when using Apple Pay,” said Sona Chawla, president of digital and chief marketing officer for Walgreens. “This offering supports our commitment to removing friction and enabling a simple and convenient customer experience.”
Users simply need to add their Balance Rewards card into the Wallet app, going through the same process as adding a traditional credit or debit card, to be able to use the new feature at Walgreens on an iPhone and Apple Watch. The announcement comes just over a week after NFC abilities were discovered alongside Balance Rewards cards in the Wallet app, hinting at incoming loyalty rewards support from Walgreens.
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I'm close to a Walgreens so I will test it today. I'm sure someone else will stop by one first but I still want to try it out.
Walgreens enabled EMV for NFC transactions, and EMV requires the final purchase amount sent to the "card" (in this case, your phone) for the transaction to be authorized. This is why the NFC reader isn't enabled on the PIN Pads at Walgreens until the cashier finishes scanning your stuff and totals the transaction. Also the same reason why when paying with a chip card at an EMV enabled retailer, you have to wait until the cashier's done before inserting your card whereas before you could swipe while the cashier was scanning. So what this means is ApplePay/Walgreens can't combine the rewards card and payment card into one tap. It needs the rewards card first, then the register has to subtract any discounts you have from it to get the final amount, then that needs to be sent back to the phone to authorize the payment.
Some (okay, most) other retailers are still using MSD mode for NFC transactions. That allows you to tap before the transaction is totaled as it more closely mirrors swiping a card to the terminal and processor and you could theoretically combine rewards and payment into one tap, but MSD is supposed to be going away eventually in favor of EMV. The big difference is EMV NFC, if implemented correctly (and that's a big if because retailers are stupid), will not require you to sign (or enter a PIN for debit) for your purchases because the phone can tell the PIN Pad that you used the phone's fingerprint scanner or PIN to authenticate yourself and you don't need to do it again on the PIN pad
This is exactly how it works. Apple Pay functionality can be used in place of scanning your rewards card. You will still have to use it again if you want to pay using a credit card with Apple Pay or swipe another card.