Apple Pay is finally here, and while Eddie Cue says in-app purchases will make up most of the purchases during launch, there are tons of things that you can buy in the real world right now.
iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners looking to toss their wallets in favor of Apple Pay can go into hundreds of stores today and purchase everything from clothes, toys, gas, or even furniture. Not all stores are supporting Apple’s mobile payments platform, so knowing which retailers accept Apple Pay will be half the battle toward replacing your wallet. Luckily, we’ve compiled this list of everything you can buy today with Apple Pay.
Here’s what you can buy starting day:
Lunch
Dining at McDonald’s, Panera Bread and Subway is even speedier with Apple Pay.
Clothes
Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdales, Macy’s, Nike, SIX:02, Anthropologie, Fancy, Free People and Urban Outfitters are expected to support Apple Pay this year.
Diapers
Babies’R’Us is Apple Pay ready today. You can also pick up supplies for your toddler at Walgreens
Gas
Chevron and Texaco gas stations will have Apple Pay near the pump.
Toys
You can get your kids’ Christmas toys from the Disney Store and Toys’R’Us using Apple Pay.
Pet supplies
Now you don’t have to fumble with your wallet and your dog leash while buying stuff at Petco and Unleashed by Petco.
Drugs
Walgreens & Duane Reade stores are accepting Apple Pay starting October 20th.
Groceries
BJ’s Wholesale Club, Instacart, Wegmans and Whole Foods Market are all ready to let you buy your groceries without your wallet.
Sports Gear
Champs Sports, Footaction, Foot Locker, House of Hoops by Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, Lady Foot Locker, UN by Foot Locker, Sports Authority are among Apple’s first retail partners that sell athletic apparel.
Office Supplies
RadioShack, Office Depot, & Staples are ready to let you check out with Apple Pay.
Car rides
Photo: Spiros Vathis
Lyft and Uber’s iOS apps support Apple Pay at launch.
A Place to sleep
Airbnb and HotelTonight will let you reserve a room using Apple Pay in their apps.
Cosmetics
Sephora stores are Apple Pay ready, and you can buy goods from Spring’s Apple Pay-equipped app.
Furniture
Chairish & Houzz don’t have physical shops, but you can still use Apple Pay to score some hip furniture from their apps.
Apple Pay supported debit and credit cards: American Express, MasterCard and Visa.
Banks that support Apple pay: Bank of America, Capital One Bank, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo + 500 banks who have signed on since September and will be Apple Pay ready over the coming weeks.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
21 responses to “Everything you can buy with Apple Pay right now”
how do you set it up
Once you update to 8.1 then use the Apple Passbook app to set up your credit card.
Update to iOS 8.1 then iOS SETTINGS > down to Passbook & Apple Pay > Add Credit or Debit Card. You have to enter some info manually – name, expiration date, security code. But you can take a photo of the front of the card and it will read the card number and enter it automatically.
moot point my country isn’t apply pay allowed- just checked… besides we have tap and pay with our credit cards already.
Many Coca-Cola branded vending machines support NFC tested and worked today at school.
What about Trader Joes, Giant Food?
If they support NFC payments, it will work. I went to a SE Michigan grocery store chain (Meijer) and it worked there this afternoon. Not sure what all the hubbub is about specific stores supporting ApplePay … if a store uses NFC payments then ApplePay should work.
The Disney Store is only accepting ApplePay thru their app right now according to apple.com. Soon to be in-store.
That was the easiest feature setup ever. Just used it and it worked great.
It’s almost guaranteed there will be more Apple Pay transactions in the next couple of months than Google Wallet had since 2011. That’s rather disappointing how Google simply let Google Wallet stagnate after all those years when it basically had the whole NFC contact-less payment market to itself. Can you make payments using Google Glass? Hell, no. Let’s see how long Eric Schmidt is going to claim Google Wallet is better in every way than Apple Pay.
> Can you make payments using Google Glass?
As a Google Glass user, this isn’t disappointing. What would you do, take off your glass and tap it to the contactless payment terminal? NFC is “NEAR Field Communication.”
There really isn’t any difference in Apple Pay and Google Wallet. So I’m not sure why you’re trying to start a flame war. Google Wallet *used* to be better (you could redeem rewards and activate loyalty cards through the NFC payment terminal). But since adoption by businesses was so low after the initials, they just left it alone.
It looks like they’re picking up steam now that apple has finally gotten vendors onboard with NFC payments. Looking forward to seeing how our two big corporate giants compete and better the contactless payment solution ;)
What do you mean there’s no difference between Apple Pay and Google Wallet? For one, Apple doesn’t store your credit cards on its servers. As a matter of fact, unlike Google, Apple won’t know the brand of condoms you purchased or what motels you last visited. It’s servers simply don’t get in the middle of each transaction. Thus, privacy.
You’re right. I had meant there was no *functional* difference. There is that one key difference – Apple Pay stores locally, Google Wallet stores on the server. Locally makes it more accessible to viruses etc, where server could theoretically make it more accessible to hackers.
Locally means that sometimes your cards don’t work. Server means that as long as the vendor accepts mastercard everything works fine.
I’m afraid you’re wrong again. Firstly, Apple Pay does not store credit card information locally. It stores a token that was created when you initially add the credit card. This token is an encrypted piece of information made up of a couple elements, including info returned by the credit card company during setup as well as device-specific info, I think). This token is stored in hardware on the CPU with no API to get to it. Therefore, it’s next to impossible to hack. Viruses or not. I don’t know how Google saves all your credit cards. Maybe they do something similar (i.e. use a token instead of the actual credit card number) – but since there are so many different Android hardware vendors, I doubt Google’s tokenization mechanism can be as iron-clad as Apple’s.
What do you mean when you say “Locally means that sometimes your cards don’t work”? Apple Pay will not work in establishments that don’t have NFC, that is certainly true. But Google Wallet has the same limitation – it requires NFC, doesn’t it? It’s not like you can “swipe” your Android phone on old-style terminals. If anything, Apple Pay does not require an Internet connection – I was under the impression that Google Wallet did (if it does not, then Google Wallet is even less secure as it would imply local caching of credit card info). If so, then Apple Pay is really more available than Google Wallet.
But the fundamental philosophical difference between Apple Pay and Google Wallet is that with Apple Pay your transaction is totally anonymous. Apple is not the middle man in every transaction. It’s between you and your credit card company. With Google Wallet (and anything Google does), Google gets to see everything you purchase. They get to “harvest” your personal information. They get to know where you buy your intimate items, where you rent a hotel room, etc. If you’re comfortable leaving all that information in one company’s hands (and potentially hackable), god bless you. I’m too paranoid for that. Google already reads all my e-mail – I don’t need them to know what brand of cereal or condom I like.
You’re right again. It’s just a token. A token theoretically any app could use on a jailbroken device, but a token and not full details.
I’ve seen several issues of cards not working on Robert Scoble’s facebook post about it. Lots of users complaining there cards aren’t working through NFC despite being added to Apple Pay and supposedly supported?
As for Google harvesting my information – it’s not something I worry about. It’s actually very convenient to have my receipts available on the web interface. And the credit card companies would be most primed to harvest that data anyway. What’s Google going to do with it? Show me relevant ads? Terrifying!
The fact of the matter is, despite a philosophical and implementation difference the two features are exactly the same. Neither is particularly better than the other at the current point. They each have reasonable tradeoffs that consumers can decide between.
And anyone that wants actual privacy will use Cash as they always have.
Again, I think there is NO APP LEVEL API to retrieve the token – it shouldn’t matter whether the phone is jailbroken or not. In other words, I believe the retrieval of the token is done at the firmware level when doing an Apple Pay transaction.
I haven’t read Scoble’s Facebook post, so I can’t comment specifically. But the problems could be user errors (even in this article, it was mentioned that on some terminals you have to push ‘Credit’ before starting the Apple Pay transaction) or, perhaps, it has to do with the advanced protocol Apple uses. I read somewhere that not all NFC terminals handle “token” based transactions.
You didn’t answer my question re. whether Google Wallet requires Internet connectivity to work. Does it? If so, there’s a functional difference right there.
Re. privacy: it may not be something *you* worry about, but I’m pretty sure there are many that do. Whether the credit card companies are the most primed to harvest that data is really irrelevant to the discussion as that privacy boat has sailed, what, like 50 years ago? On a logical level, they are manifestly NOT the most likely to harvest the information – their revenue has always come from charging transaction fees, not from selling customer information. Google’s whole existence is predicated on collecting personal information. In other words, Google would not even exist if it didn’t harvest information.
> You didn’t answer my question re. whether Google Wallet requires Internet connectivity to work. Does it? If so, there’s a functional difference right there.
I did not see your question. It does not, except to switch credit cards. Your most recently selected default card is stored on their server and used for payment via the virtual mastercard Google Wallet uses.
You’re really stretching for ways to try to make Apple Pay seem better – but in the end they’re the same.
What matters is how they differentiate themselves in the future. I, personally, am hoping Google Wallet encourages vendors and re-enables the ability to redeem loyalty cards and coupons through the NFC handshake like it used to.
I’m really not trying to ‘stretch’. I’m just exploring whether the two are really functionally equivalent as you originally asserted. Doesn’t your last answer show a big difference? Switching credit cards is something one does frequently – usually at the time of the transaction. What you’re saying is that if there’s no internet connection, you’re limited to using the current card. So if I last used my master card and then go into a Costco (which only accepts Amex) I potentially won’t be able to pay (if you have ever stepped into one of these “tin boxes”, you’d know that network connectivity there is bad at best).
I don’t have a problem if Google Wallet becomes successful on the coat tails of Apple Pay’s success. To each their own.
Again, that’s just an implementatoin detail. They’re functionally the same. They both perform the exact same function.
It’s funny to consider it being successful on the coat tails of Apple Pay – but I guess that’s true. Apple finally got the retailers on board. The most recent features you’re comparing (Apple Pay using individual cards instead of the single card) were features that Google Wallet explored – but the credit card vendors didn’t want to get on board.
No idea how Apple got them to change their minds. It’s clear that Google Pioneered, Apple got people on board, and now Google has to innovate to come out on top again. It’s a really strange situation.
As an Android fan, at least I can still claim that I’ve been doing this for years already. :)
“Using individual cards instead of the single card) were features that Google Wallet explored – but the credit card vendors didn’t want to get on board. No idea who Apple got them to change their minds.” – perhaps Google insisted on being the man-in-the-middle, even if they just passed along the customer’s credit card. I’m not that knowledgeable in the Android arena, but from what I understand, Google is in no position to impose specific hardware standards – such as a secure element on every Android phone. Therefore, Google Wallet would always have to have a Google Server somewhere in the mix. I don’t think credit card companies appreciate a “middle man” because such a middle man could potentially wield power over them (e.g. if Google Wallet takes off, what’s to prevent Google from demanding a larger cut of the transaction pie? When nobody carries physical cards anymore, credit card companies would have no recourse but to agree. Apple Pay has no Apple choke points between the user and the credit card company.
But I’m just conjecturing.
Actually there is a big difference between Google Wallet and Apple Pay functionality, The Touch ID. Because of Touch ID, you don’t need to put a PIN code or remind one every time you make a purchase and, because of that, the transaction is simpler, more secure and faster than Google Wallet.