Starting today, Best Buy customers can use Apple Pay to make purchases in the Best Buy app when using an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus. A free update is now available in the Apple App Store.
All U.S. Best Buy stores will begin accepting Apple Pay later this year.
“Today’s consumers have many different ways to spend their money and we want to give our customers as many options as possible in how they pay for goods and services at Best Buy,” the company said in a statement.
The acceptance of Apple Pay in the Best Buy app is the latest enhancement for Best Buy’s mobile platform. Best Buy is opening a technology innovation office in Seattle this summer to focus largely on mobile and will continue to implement new tools to enhance the customer experience in this important growth area.
MacDailyNews Take: So, how long until the other MCX merchants wake up and smell the coffee?
Boycott CVS and Rite Aid and any other company that willfully turns off NFC in an effort to block the vastly more secure, much more private, and far easier-to-use Apple Pay service.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz, “silverhawk1,” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Major retailers see Apple Pay wave – November 17, 2014
In only 3 weeks, Apple Pay is changing how consumers pay – November 17, 2014
Boycott CVS and Rite Aid – October 27, 2014
Bad business: CVS and Rite Aid antagonize their most well-heeled customers by blocking Apple Pay – October 27, 2014
CVS stores reportedly disabling NFC to shut down Apple Pay – October 25, 2014
iPhone users earn significantly more than those who settle for Android phones – October 8, 2014
Yet more proof that Android is for poor people – June 27, 2014
More proof that Android is for poor people – May 13, 2014
Apple’s iOS dominates in richer countries, Android in poorer regions – March 25, 2014
Twitter heat map shows iPhone use by the affluent, Android by the poor – June 20, 2013
iPhone users smarter, richer than Android phone users – August 16, 2011
Yankee Group: Apple iPhone owners shop more, buy more, remain more loyal vs. other device users – July 20, 2010
It is a start but Best Buy has a long way to go with pricing and service before I will likely cross their door again.
BB needs to relocate that Seattle office to Cupertino, nothing left in Redmond anymore.
it’s like a conference of Pirate captains:
Pirate Cap One ” We should wait, cause there’s a pile of gold called Current C over the far horizon, once we get past the Razor Reefs, the British Navy, Sharks, killer hurricanes and monster squids… ”
PIrate Cap Two with the Best Buy T-shirt “But there’s a pile of Gold RIGHT HERE … “.
With every new Pay supporting business, I’m not only happy for Apple. I’m happy for progress away from the Windows XP Embedded POS POS devices that provide the massive security hole allowing all the robbery and selling of scanned credit cards. The sooner those scanners are dumpstered, the better for everyone.
[CurrentC enables retaining of the POS POS scanners, a very bad thing.]
Turning off NFC to thwart Apple Pay has backfired, and some retailers in the CurrentC consortium are unwilling to suffer lost sales any longer. Likely Walmart will hold out till the bitter end. The Waltons will not beat Apple with their vampiric payments system, and their vassals are beginning to sense it.
I recall how well it went for the Waltons when they want SJ to give them a better price on iPods and iPhones, then other retailers get. Steve told them they were welcome to shave a few bucks off the selling price, but there would be no shaving on the wholesale price.
The biggest reason merchants were reluctant to accept it was they lost the ability to track their customers purchases, Apple pay was too anonymous. But my local Big Y supermarket now accepts Apple pay and they offer their own rewards card which, if you CHOOSE to use it, allows them to still track my purchases. I allow it because they pay me for the privilege. If I choose to opt out, I just don’t use the rewards card, but if I do use it, I get lower prices on many items. Walmart is rather thoughtless and thinks they are too big to be hurt.
Something tells me the loss of consumer metrics data isn’t as painful as the loss of revenue. There must be some tracking data showing store loyalty by ApplePay users that is driving this.
Best Buy isn’t doing this to be “technologically savvy”…
Walmart isn’t thoughtless, they just haven’t come up with a good tracking model. They eschewed loyalty cards because it looks like they aren’t collecting data or they want the flexibility of just setting prices for all people or didn’t want to manage a loyalty program.
Of course, they ARE collecting data through CCs… so this hurts them. I’m sure they’ll introduce a points system.
I was out with friends this weekend when I started having problems with a contact lens (after being out all night). The previous day my wallet was left in a pair of pants at the cleaners so I was getting rides all weekend and using Apple Pay or borrowing money.
I left a restaurant on foot looking for a place to find contact lens solution, and turned down cash from someone because the area looked bustling. After walking around some, the only three options around where I could buy ReNu were a grocery
store that had old registers, a Rite Aid, and a CVS! If I was ambivalent toward MCX merchants before, I am certainly avoiding them now!
Walmart has lost a lot of my business this year to Amazon’s one-touch shopping with Apple Pay. Jersey Mike’s & Jimmy Johns have lost a lot of my business this year in favor of Subway and Panera due to Apple Pay. CVS has lost all of my business this year to Walgreens.
Someday these and other merchants will realize that they are leaving money on the table by blocking Apple Pay.
I head Discover will also soon join Apple Pay after pressure from their customers.
Yup. They have.
Discover? Are they still in business? Why on earth would you have a discover card? I have a hard enough time using AMEX…
I haven’t had much trouble using my AMEX….every now & then I find some place that doesn’t accept it, but for the most part it seems to be ubiquitous.
why do you need a best buy app to do this?
You can use the BB App with Apple Pay as soon as you download the app. The physical stores will not have Apple Pay until later this year.
Sorry for the accidental 1-vote. Touch screen error.
Is this a chink in the “Don’t gimme a C, a bouncy Current C” MCX armor? I suspect the floodgates from the last holdouts to Apple Pay will open sooner than later..
Nobody with an iPhone shops at Best Buy.
Reality prevails. Sometimes American corporations fall into the trap of believing their own PR. However, the customer always prevails. Best Buy have realised that it is the customer who owns the wallet…
… and iPhone owning customers are the ones with money to spend.
CurrentC is already dead.
I haven’t been inside a Best Buy in years. When I discovered New Egg, I stopped going there. I used to buy a lot of DVDs at Best Buy, but that stopped when I decided to buy all of my movies from iTunes. I couldn’t care less what payment system Best Buy uses.
I rarely go to Best Buy. I always find them understaffed, uninformed, and not consumer friendly at all. I’m surprised they are still in business. Perhaps this move will save them for a while longer.
The BB’s I drop into are rarely understaffed and as I browse, I am routinely asked if I need any help, perhaps some stores are different, but I would think BB would have a vested interest in making sure that there employee’s if not actively engaged in some task, are looking for customers that may need help, and that’s what I’ve seen in the couple BB’s I’ve visited in MN.