Starbucks, KFC, Chili’s, And Delta Start Accepting Apple Pay For Almost No One To Use

Mobile wallets still aren’t catching on with Americans, even a year after the introduction of Apple Pay and a month after the introduction of Android Pay. There are hundreds of millions of capable phones in consumers’ purses and pockets, so it’s not due to technical restraints. Maybe the answer is to make the system available in more stores? Yesterday, an Apple executive announced that three more large chains will accept their payment system.

All of the new places where iPhone users can wave their phones at cash registers are places to eat: Starbucks will start a pilot program at some point before the end of this year. Apple Pay was already part of the company’s iOS app: customers could use it to reload their stored-value accounts. Chili’s and KFC plan to start accepting Apple Pay sometime in 2016.

Delta has added Apple Pay to its iOS app, allowing passengers booking tickets from their smartphones to pay using their Apple wallets as well.

Restaurants and stores haven’t really been keen to adopt the payment method, though the lack of places to actually use mobile payments is part of the reason why consumers aren’t especially interested in using them, either.

Apple Pay to expand to Starbucks, Chili’s, KFC [Reuters]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist