Well, it looks the Rite Aid has announced that it will be accepting Apple Pay and Google Wallet at its 4,600 locations across the US starting Saturday, August 15th. This is interesting because about 10 months ago the company abruptly dropped support for the payment system, instead focusing on pushing the heavily criticized CurrentC. I guess they changed their minds.
Rite Aid CEO Ken Martindale says that accepting mobile payments will allow the retailer to “offer Rite Aid customers an easy and convenient checkout process, which we know is important to them.”
Just after Apple Pay first launched last October, Rite Aid, and CVS too, were the most noteworthy hold outs on accepting the iPhone and Apple Watch-based payment system. These two companies belonged to a group of retailers that formed the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium. These retailers all agreed to ban mobile payments in favor of their own mobile wallet system, CurrentC. Well, now it is time to change their tune. They now realize that this is the better choice.
Now that Rite Aid has reversed its stance, most of the MCX holdouts now see how popular Apple Pay is. Best Buy was one of the biggest retailers, and they started accepting Apple Pay earlier this year. Retailers are realizing that Apple Pay makes more sense for them.
Source Slashgear