American retail chain Target is said to be developing its own mobile payment service that would compete with Apple Pay, according to the latest Reuters report this morning. Target’s mobile wallet service is described as being in the early stages of development with a possible launch possibly planned for sometime next year. Like other retailer-specific mobile wallets, Target’s mobile wallet would let customers pay for goods through a smartphone app.
While Target is certainly no stranger to Apple, with all the Apple Watch and iPad sales headlining during Black Friday this year, the retailer has resisted accepting Apple Pay for purchases in its stores since Apple’s wallet service launch in October 2014. Target has, however, made Apple Pay checkout through its app available for online orders since day one.
Target CEO Brian C. Cornell has even been open to the idea of introducing Apple Pay for in-store purchases in the near future, although during a Recode conference interview this year the executive importance of first rolling out chip-and-pin support for more secure debit and credit cards that are now growing common in the United States, then revisiting Apple Pay in stores after the holiday shopping season. Both chip-in-pin and contactless payment support is critical for Target which was hit with a massive security breach in 2013, which prompted the retailer to promote the use of paper checks (of all things) at checkout.
Notably, Target is among the list of retailers included in the Merchant Customer Exchange consortium, a band of retailers behind the arguably-failed CurrentC mobile wallet service. News of Target developing its own mobile wallet service likely says more about the demise of CurrentC and less about future plans not to accept Apple Pay in stores next year based on Cornell’s past comments.
Walmart, another early CurrentC backer that has so far resisted accepting Apple Pay in its stores, recently officially announced its own Walmart Pay mobile wallet service. Several other early CurrentC backers including Kohl’s, Best Buy, Chili’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts have adopted Apple Pay payments in either their stores, iPhone and iPad apps, or both.
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Yet another reason to not shop there. These chip-in-pin cards are a pain and do little to help with security breaches. Target, of all companies, should be first in line for Apple Pay. Of course, as a member of the MCE supporting CurrentC, their vision may be a little blinded. The difference using Apple Pay at stored like Best Buy, McDonalds, Walgreens, etc. is night and day. I’d rather go to an ATM and get cash to pay with than use the crappy chip-in-pin solutions out there.
how difficult is it to hold a chip card up to a reader? Your comment is absolutely ridiculous.
A cashier at Trader Joe’s the other day was telling me it takes up to a minute longer to process the now mandatory chip-and-pin card transactions. Multiply that by the hundreds of people checking out through each kiosk per day, and it’s a very big waste of everyone’s time for not that much more security relative to the existing scheme, and a lot less security than Apple Pay.
Yeah – if it was that easy. Instead I have to insert the card into the chip reader, answer a bunch of questions, and then remove the card when I’m done. At least with swiping the card it wasn’t as bad.
Nah, he’s got a point. It seems to me that checking out with chip and PIN takes longer. They swipe, then insert, pull it out, type in a code. What a pain.
Sorry, Chip&Pin and NFC are both much faster than mag stripe if the merchant has plenty of comms lines open to the outside. Both are OLD news in every country in the world except the USA – which is just catching up to where many countries were 20 years ago in retail and banking.
do they really think that they of all people should be entering the payment industry? They have the terminals that can accept Apple Pay, just upgrade the back end and hit the switch. These people need to realize that no one will use their option because almost no one uses Apple Pay. Apple Pay is faaaaaar more mainstream.
I agree 100%. It is astounding that major companies think they should invest the time, research and money into creating a whole new standard.
Too many cooks in the kitchen. I think that only your mobile platform (iOS, Android, Windows) should be the ones developing payment methods because of card/bank and device parity. Chase, Samsung, Walmart, Target, etc need to stay out because they are too specific and limited.
Executives at Chase, Samsung, Walmart, Target, etc., don’t see it that way. They see a large potential revenue stream that is going to be taken by a competitor and want to do whatever they can to grab a slice of it, even if it’s not the best thing for the consumer. They care about profits, not the consumer.
Why all these companies just wasting money on these failures :)
DOA
Why are they so persistent on competing with apple pay?
No one wants to download an app simply to pay with their phone.
Can you say FRAGMENTATION?
This category has not reached critical mass yet. Someone has the opportunity to become the standard, but it may take governments getting on board. If my digital wallet contained my D/L, I could ditch my physical wallet.
For me, it is all about customer data!
Apple Pay is working, secure, just cost 0.15… but doesn’t orivide customer’s data!
And what retailers want is… customer’s data!
I think customers are more willing to give up their personal data with store rewards cards (“hey they give us free stuff!”), rather than accepting a new way to pay than their traditional ways or using Apple Pay.
How the heck can any of these companies honestly think that this will compete with Apple Pay or Google Pay? What is the point?
Someone on their board, or a group of board members, honestly think this is a good plan and to move forward with it?
To be fair, readers should understand that Target already HAS a “payment system” of sorts they’re already using in their Red Card. Cardholders use the Red Card to checkout, as a payment form. It isn’t merely a Loyalty card. And Target on the backend has it tied to the shopper’s bank account (it can also be set up as a credit card).
I’m not sure that ApplePay supports using such services. And if not, this alone is a pretty compelling reason for Target to try to use the existing infrastructure (financial backend) they already have, while also not taking on additional fees that Apple charges (for what would effectively be a redundant payment processing service).
And Targets previous issues with customer info security should be “a pretty compelling reason” for users not to trust Target with any of their info.
Very handy when you want an easy way to allow your private data to be made public.
But… why? Why don’t we all just go to target, fill up our carts with a bunch of crap, go to check out and once they say they don’t take Apple Pay, we walk away? I mean, I realize it’s not the cashier’s fault, but it gets the point across to management if a lot of people do this.
Yeah, let’s need 20 apps on our phones, one for each store’s separate pay system.
Yeah. That’s what consumers want.
Why? The only reason why they would want to do this is so that they can collect customer data and track their purchases for future advertising. I won’t ever use a service like this. Target, out of all other retailers should want to allow their customers a more secure way of paying since they had a massive data breach two years ago that they conveniently didn’t reveal until the holidays were almost over.
Following in Walmart’s DOA maneuver.
This is exactly why Samsung wins with their payment option. If only Apple bought Loop pay we wouldn’t be reading these post.
Will the Samsung LoopPay-based solution work with the chin-n-pin readers? I can swipe my card at these readers, but then the readers insist that I insert the card because it has the chip; it won’t accept the swipe. If Samsung’s LoopPay system simply emulates the swipe by using the MST technology, wouldn’t it result in the same prompt by the reader and therefore not work? The only way I would see around that is if Samsung strikes deals with the banks issuing the cards – considering how much effort Apple put into that, I’m not sure if Samsung would see as broad of an adoption amongst the large number of card issuers in the US alone.
I’m so sick of all these places wanting me to download and expose my confidential data to yet another source for attack. Regardless of the rigidity of any technology security, its simple to understand that the more places that have the data, the higher the risk is to have it compromised. May that is all inapplicable, but that is how I see it.
Give my credit card info to a retail store? yeah huh, NO THANK YOU! I will leave that to the experience tech security experts at Apple and Google.
I was at Target last week and asked if they accept Apple Pay. I was told NO. I asked why, considering the huge security breach Target experienced last year. The woman told me that Apple Pay was “compromised” and “we will not accept it”. I said that I don’t believe that was true at all, and if it was it would have been ALL over the news, and she looked at me and again stated “Apple Pay is not secure. It has been compromised. We will not accept it.” I asked her about the breach last year and she just ignored that. I told her she was incorrect and she looked at me and stated “Well, its clear you know more than I do. It’s been compromised. How did you want to pay?”
What an idiot. I complained to Target and explained I would no longer be shopping at Target. The correct answer should have been “No, we don’t”. But don’t get your arrogant self in my face with incorrect, WRONG information. I’ll never be back to Target.
That is a complete lie. There have been no reported breaches of Apple Pay and the very mechanism used to secure the card data is infinitely better than what Apple has Target has been doing to-date as evident by the Target data breaches. I wonder is Target is pushing this narrative to employees to be delivered to customers that ask about Apple Pay or if this was just some lone anti-Apple employee…
As a Target employee, I can honestly say that they don’t tell us jack about what services we are gonna support until after its happened. That employee was making stuff up, and should not cause you to stop shopping at a retail store. I hope that we will support Apple Pay soon, and I oppose the idea of a “Target Pay” service, but I have no knowledge of any of these plans. I can say that the chip and pin takes a tiny bit longer, but it isn’t really that much slower than the mag strip option. Apple Pay would take 2 seconds and would dramatically increase customer satisfaction in the store. Also, Apple needs a major retailer like Target (since Walmart won’t budge) to get their payment system out there more. Right now, most of the places that support it are WAY out of my price range. I shop at Target all the time and would use Apple Pay like none other.