NFC TIMES Exclusive – LAS VEGAS, Nev.: It’s been more than two and a half years since Apple Pay launched in the U.S., and retail giant Wal-Mart Stores still is no closer to accepting NFC at its 4,000-plus stores in the U.S. then when Apple began rolling out its NFC-enabled mobile payments service in October of 2014.
Wal-Mart payments director John Drechny, speaking late last week on a panel at the Transact conference and exhibition in Las Vegas, Nev., made it clear that the chain has no intention of changing course. Meanwhile, a payments chief at the high-end Nordstrom department store chain, Bryan Penny, speaking on the same panel, said he wants to be able to decline to accept NFC-enabled wallets he doesn’t trust, an action that would violate the “honor-all-wallets” rule of Visa and Mastercard.
Penny claimed to have gotten agreement from Apple and at least one major point-of-sale terminal vendor last week that he indicates could lead to setting up of a certification program for mobile wallets or some other system that could allow merchants to block acceptance of certain wallets.
