One Saturday not to long ago we went to Target to spend some gift cards that we had lying around that we need to use before we moved. While I was there I wanted to grab a coffee at their sort of Starbucks. You know it’s says Starbucks but it’s not. I know it’s not since I can’t use my Starbucks card.
While I was at fo-Starbucks I noticed they had a tap to pay/NFC reader on their point-of-sale terminal. Since I try to use Apple Pay everywhere I can in hopes that one day I won’t need to really carry a wallet. I was happy to try to use it.. Then I tried. The checkout clerk said oh it’s Apple it won’t work. The machine only takes Samsung Pay. I didn’t really want to argue the technical details of NFC payment terminals with a fo-Starbucks Clerc. To be clear however what he said is not entirely true. Apparently target is deliberately limiting their system to Samsung pay or simply telling people anything else will not work. And NFC chip is an NFC chip. If I had one in my credit card I should be able to just tap it on their system.
I find it frustrating when a retailer is misleading customers about their deliberately limiting their choice at the same time. Let’s face it there’s nothing stopping them from doing it. And I don’t think it’s a legal issue however it’s a bit shady to tell me it just doesn’t work. As it turns out Target cannot use the failed CurrentC. However they decided to use their own app to make payments only. That way they keep the loyalty information and save prices on credit card transactions. That credit card transaction savings is a good thing. A good thing for them since they are not passing the savings on to the consumers. On the plus side this entire engagement reminded me to be thankful that CurrentC was a complete and utter failure.
I sadly paid with my chip and PIN (only using a debit card since the US hasn’t figured out PIN’s for credit cards yet) and still enjoyed sipping my Cappuchino while pushing the girls in the shopping cart.
Photo is from a CVS POS were likely I had the same issue.