By COLlive reporter
Most Jewish-owned stores and businesses in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood say they don’t plan on accepting the Apple Pay new mobile payment service.
And they are not alone.
Many stores and large retailers around the country are refusing to use the service which promises customers an easy and smooth checkout with a single swipe that activates your payment method.
The reason Wal-Mart and others have given for their rejection of the tap-to-pay technology is Apple’s high processing fees. When you swipe your card at stores, retailers have to pay credit card companies between 1.5% and 3% of every transaction.
Contacted by email by a resident, Sarah K, the following stores said they don’t plan on using Apple Pay:
Bunch O Bagels, Apple Drugs, Pomodori, Crown Kosher Meat, Sushi Spot, House of Glatt, Little Toes, Mendy’s Deli, Boytique, Sweet Expressions, Raskin’s Fish, Mr. Clean, Kehot Publication Society, Eber’s Liquor, Zakon’s Kingston Toys, CH Houseware, Weinstein’s Hardware, First Quality Products (paper & plastic goods), See View Optical, Gombo’s Bakery, Kingston Pizza, Regency Cleaners, Prime Sandwich and Kahan’s Superette.
“I recently purchased a new iPhone 6, and as a bit of a tech enthusiast I decided to reach out to local Crown Heights businesses and see which stores support the new Apple Pay payment method or have plans to do so in the future,” Sarah K told COLlive.com.
Empire Grill said in an email that while they don’t have the option to accept Apple Pay at the moment, they do have alternatives like PayPal and even Google Wallet, Apple’s rival that never took off.
While a number of the local businesses said they are “not familiar with it,” others such as Empire Kosher said “we are looking forward to using this as one of our methods of payment.”
Businesses that said they do support it are:
Mikvah Meir and Duane Reade & Walgreens (as part of their national partnership).
Stores that responded that they plan to support it in the future are:
Hamafitz Judaica, Sterling Electronics, Empire Kosher, Market Place, Chocolatte and Empire Grill.
Stores that are looking into it and may support it in the future are:
Raskin’s Fruit, Judaica World, Holesome Bagels, Teva Drugs, Post Mark It, Primo Hatters and Happy Dry Cleaners.
VIDEO: How Apple Pay Works
VIDEO: Apple’s Eddy Cue explains the new mobile payment service built-in to every iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Sterling Electronics for one has no credit card minimum for a while already.
first of all you’re wrong regarding minimums, as a mastercard and visa cardholder, one of your rights is not to be refused because of a minimum. regarding the tap to pay, you’re right, it has been around for ages and google wallet and softcard have been able to use it as well as any contactless credit card (which lately are being phased out in the US). RiteAid has had such machines for ages and they work with apple pay just like GW or SC, i have been using isis/softcard for ages and I’d love if more stores got it, i’m… Read more »
check your facts. it might be for a credit card, but NOT a debit card, which most of them illegally require!
of course they won’t! they all legally require a debit minimum!! ILLEGAL!!!!!! i can’t stand it. i never heard of such crazy activity until i moved here. i charge 50 cents to my AMEX back at home, no such thing as an illegal debit minimum.
With any card even debit you can have a minimum but to give a a discount on cards with a debit card you can’t
for example when stores say “cash n carry” they need to accept the debit card
I heard a debit card CANT have a minimum
Also not exactly legal, as per visa, master card, & other credit cards terms of usage for merchants.
Sad but true
#1: it is 100% legal to have a CC minimum.
Tap-to-pay technology has been around for a while. It annoys me that all of a sudden Apple comes out with it, soooo everyone has to start excepting it!!!
Why is that?
So cool!! Would have never imagined!
Yimos Moshiach!
Not surprised by this as these are the same stores who have “minimums” for using a credit card. Not exactly the greatest customer service.