While its parent company Walmart remains one of the most notable Apple Pay holdouts in the United States, British supermarket chain Asda now appears to be testing the mobile payments service at select locations in the United Kingdom.
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The supermarket chain, which has 626 stores across the U.K., recently confirmed on Twitter that Apple Pay is something it is "currently trialling in a few of our stores," but it remains unclear if the testing will lead to a wider rollout in the future.
A few Asda customers have recently tweeted about the newly enabled Apple Pay support at superstore locations in Aberdeen, Scotland and Ferring, a small village located about 60 miles southwest from London, England.
@Hyperglaucoma Thanks, I believe this is something we're currently trialling in a few of our stores. Thanks, Beth — Asda Service Team (@AsdaServiceTeam) August 15, 2016
In 1999, Asda was purchased by Walmart, which recently completed a nationwide launch of its own QR code-based mobile payments solution Walmart Pay in the United States. Walmart was initially committed to the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium and its now indefinitely postponed payments service CurrentC.
In related news, Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, and digital banking service B introduced Apple Pay support for cardholders in the U.K. last week.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)What does ASDA stand for? Is this an acronym or is that a real word that means something to the british people? Because I am only aware of the American Sleep Disorder Association. And hopefully these stores don't put people to sleep :D
From Wikipedia...In 1965, when the Asquith brothers approached Associated Dairies to run the butchery departments within their small store chain, a merger was proposed. So they joined together with Noel Stockdale, Arthur Stockdale's son, to form a new company, Asquith + Dairies = Asda (capitalised from 1985).
Supermarkets have been slow at implementing Contactless. Tesco has only just recently started accepting it. Sainsbury's don't support it yet. ASDA have a very small trial. It's only Waitrose and M&S that have been offering contactless for some time (and Apple Pay since it launched).
At first I thought it was about data grabbing on your shopping habits, but everyone has a loyalty card to do that these days, so you don't really need the payment method to do that.You'd think stores would want to make it as easy as possible for people to spend as much as possible in the way they prefer.
Several in the same area?
SE England