Saw a billboard in Southern California that all ARCO will be accepting credit cards. The store locator on the website indicates which locations have turned it on. You may remember ARCO went in with tap debit originally, but no idea if any of those locations also have tap credit. I suspect they will be adding the two tier pricing in many locations that accept credit.

Further, most of the ARCO (and all of the USA Gasoline and Thrifty) in my region have actually moved to Speedway Express branding (no integrated C store though). They also added credit in the conversion, but haven't seen a contactless pad on those, only if it is a full Speedway have I seen the tap. A recent auth at a new Speedway Express brand still listed as Tesoro, which had the major ARCO contract. I haven't seen even EMV.

So, a big crazy mess for sure. It also does appear Sinclair is pushing to be a lower pricing franchise option similar to Circle K without a Mobil branding.

Pricing in this region varies so widely compared to other states I think. The inconsistency of payment options, methods and pricing just adds to the mix. You can see why Costco is so popular because it is a lot simpler.