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Liquor, wine, and beer drinkers across Ontario, Canada can now pay for their alcoholic beverages with an iPhone or Apple Watch, as LCBO has confirmed that it now accepts Apple Pay at all of its over 850 stores in the province.
LCBO had been gradually rolling out Apple Pay support since June at its stores, which have long been equipped with NFC-based terminals for contactless payments, and the province-wide rollout was officially completed last week.
Meanwhile, former CurrentC backers continue to reverse course and expand Apple Pay support at their U.S. stores. Twitter user Matt S. was able to use Apple Pay at Sheetz, a gas and convenience chain with over 500 stores in mostly Mid-Atlantic states, next to Raleigh–Durham International Airport.
Sheetz has not publicly confirmed that it is widely launching Apple Pay at the gas pump, but many of its locations are equipped with the requisite contactless payments infrastructure to tap an iPhone or Apple Watch.
QuikTrip, another U.S. chain of over 730 gas and convenience stores in the midwest and southern United States, has also supported Apple Pay and other contactless payments since February, with all locations coming on board within the past few weeks. QuikTrip does not appear to accept Apple Pay directly at their gas pumps at this time.
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Sheetz and QuikTrip were both previously committed to the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) and its indefinitely-postponed Apple Pay rival CurrentC.
Sheetz and QuikTrip join a handful of other former MCX members that now accept Apple Pay, including high-profile retailers Best Buy and Rite Aid. Apple Pay holdouts Walmart and Target also belonged to MCX, but the former released Walmart Pay and the latter is developing its own similar QR code-based solution.
Update: Former MCX member CVS also appears to be testing Apple Pay support on contactless payment terminals at select U.S. stores. The pharmacy chain's official stance is that it's "in the process of evaluating mobile payment options for our customers."
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(View all)And I got that notification last week too, but I refuse to use Walmart Pay on principle. I figure the less adoption it sees, the sooner it'll go away and they can devote their attention to supporting NFC payments. Hopefully WP will die (an albeit slow death), and they can finally conform to what the customers want instead of trying to strong-arm the industry into using its QR code kludge of a payment system just to save on transaction fees.