PrendellHiggins

Pretty sure it's all locations. My store didn't support it a month ago but does now. One more holdout has finally converted!

diburning

There are 7 Elevens with MX915s? All of the ones I've ever been to have the Ingenicos.

scibot

Locations usually with Conoco or Phillips 66 branded gas use one pos system and not two separate systems. But nfc has never been enabled on the MX915s for years now.

tmiw

The one location around here that had MX915s was unbranded. I seem to remember it going to Ingenicos after its remodel but I'm not 100% sure.

scibot

I found a 7-Eleven location in CO with Wayne pumps with nfc enabled at the pump and the 7-Eleven system with iSC250s also with nfc enabled inside. 7-Eleven with Sinclair gas in CO uses two different pos systems with Passport for fuel and 7-Eleven fort everything else. In KC most stations are MX915 only with only a few with Ingenico iSC250s with nfc enabled on them. I really don't think they know what they are doing...

tmiw

Sprouts seems to use the global AID for contactless debit card transactions now. I wonder if they got a bunch of complaints and finally decided that forced debit routing for contactless wasn't worth the trouble.

Unfortunately, this also means no cash back on contactless from there anymore. Given that contactless at ATMs is still nowhere near common (especially for cards other than the ATM owner's), this is a pretty big loss IMO.

EDIT: also, it seems that the credit union debit card I have went signature-preferring at the same time they introduced contactless according to cardpeek. Not a surprise but still.

tmiw

I went to a new cookie shop yesterday that seemed to be using a reader similar to the one in the Waffle House photo that someone posted quite a long time ago. Unfortunately, contactless didn't work; I kept getting "transaction could not be completed" type errors with my physical Chase card. Inserting did work fine, however.

Given the issues I had, I wonder if contactless actually works properly at Waffle House or if they even use that device anymore for that matter.

RedLight2015

I used the weird Waffle House device here in Mesa, AZ with my Apple Card via Apple Pay, and it worked just fine. Probably an error in configuring the merchant account, or the merchant account for whatever reason still doesn't support contactless......you'd honestly be surprised.

tmiw

I'm guessing EMV contactless, right? Or is Waffle House still using MSD?

PrendellHiggins

It continues to elude me as to why pay at pump apps are a thing. I never see anyone use them. Perhaps in northern territories where it's freezing cold? But even then they still have to get out eventually. How is it not easier and more cost effective to just develop an NFC rewards pass for the mobile wallets? I'm only aware of two that do this: Texaco in the UK for Google Pay & Apple Wallet and Maverik in the USA for Apple Wallet only.

Tried Wawa's just to laugh at how awful it was and it crashed the pump. I guess tap once for loyalty and again for payment would be too difficult for people. Instead they have to download an app, login, wait, authenticate, wait more, and then the pump will finally activate. Ridiculous.

(Oh and btw our app won't work if you don't have signal. Sorry, but uhhh... why didn't you have a physical card to insert in case you found one of our stations that still doesn't have contactless? 🤦🏼‍♂️)
— Exxon, basically

phltraveler

I think the thinking of the gas station chains was twofold: You could offer contactless payment before everyone retrofitted for EMV/NFC with targeted promos, and you could ingrain the habit of using a single app where people then don't view your brand of gas as interchangeable for others due to the convenience. However, a lot of these apps are realllllly poorly designed and have too many headaches to be friendly to those who aren't as technically inclined or willing to avoid the skimming risk if at all possible. (at the start of the pandemic it was nice to fully authorize the pump, no loyalty ID entry on the pump, no ZIP code, no "do you want a receipt" on the pump - you still have to handle the pump outside full serve, but it's less surfaces to touch. Northeast climates are also nice when it's cold to minimize time outside.)

However the main benefit if you're offer inclined is to churn the bonuses offers for these apps. ExxonMobil regularly throws point promos for app users, Gulf regularly throws random "15 cents off a gallon today only" promos, BPme regularly offers $10 off $20+ via Amex offers, etc...

ExxonMobil seemed to lean hard into the app approach to convince station owners they had a replacement for the old speedpass keychains that didn't require as expensive of pump retrofits for NFC. Doesn't seem to have worked - many station owners have relented and gone back to install NFC contactless. The loyalty ID still doesn't have NFC though. (I think the stations are still salty about pouring the dev effort into these apps and not getting the expected ROI, hence the stubbornness of not adding NFC contactless support on the loyalty ID. Could just also be the glacial pace of IT in certain industries though.)

I would add Costco as maybe another one above (with a caveat), as if you have their branded Citi Visa the membership and payment info are transmitted to the pump in one go on tap - so the pump goes to remove handle/select grade with just the one tap. They do not have the membership as a separately available NFC ID outside the Visa though (either for the non-credit card membership card, or for mobile wallets).

tmiw

App-based loyalty failing doesn't necessarily imply NFC. In fact, without the increased demand from customers for NFC-based payment, it's possible gas stations would never have bothered installing the readers and simply stuck with EMV (+ optionally phone number based loyalty).

(BTW, most Mobil stations around here still don't have outdoor readers, but at least a few did install them recently.)

I believe it was mentioned here quite a while ago that it actually costs a significant amount of money/time to do NFC loyalty, even for normal merchants using stuff like e.g. Verifone MX915/P400s. Meanwhile, adding a barcode to an existing app (or even using the standard API to get it in the Wallet app on iOS or the Android equivalent) is far less of a hassle. If it's a massively hard sell for the normal merchants, I can't imagine gas stations (which for one thing are the only ones that successfully managed to make surcharging standard in their industry) would want to.

Costco's pumps have the hardware to read the QR code from their app but I have no clue if/when that will be turned on.

tmiw

Debit cards use the global AID there too, apparently. Seems like that's becoming more and more common vs. using PINless debit or even just asking for PIN.

SPN Lifer

NFC = near-field communication (contactless)

Although used in the thread title, I have just perused this entire thread and nowhere, so far, has this NFC abbreviation been defined. Perhaps the original poster (OP) might want to include this in Post # 1?

Two other undefined abbreviations in this thread include:

EMV = Europay, MasterCard & Visa. These were the 1994 founders of the EMV chip or smart chip technology.

AID = Application Identifier. "A common AID allows merchants and acquirers to route a transaction to any payment network available on the card. The U.S. Common Debit AID allows merchants to set any of the global debit payment networks and the U.S debit payment networks that are enabled on the card including payment networks such as Star, NYCE, Accel Exchange, etc."

https://blog.ingenico.us/blog/what-i...does-it-matter

Majuki

I believe all of the above were defined at one point or another in a previous thread on EMV cards. The contactless thread split from the EMV thread, and the original EMV thread has since been closed to new posts.