Roger Fingas
Fried chicken chain KFC on Wednesday announced that it has finally begun supporting Apple Pay, something originally teased by Apple in October 2015.
The option is now available at "some" U.S. locations, and should eventually reach all of them by the end of the summer, KFC said. Like some other restaurants, people will be able to use Apple Pay both at the counter and in drivethroughs.
The rollout is part of a broader adoption of mobile payments at KFC, as the restaurant is now also accepting Android Pay and Samsung Pay.
While Apple Pay has had rapid adoption by U.S. banks, merchant support has lagged behind. Indeed two other merchant partners announced at the same time as KFC — Chili's and Starbucks — are still without compatibility, even though the latter has long had close business ties with Apple.
One of the biggest obstacles is that payment terminals must support the NFC chips found in iPhones and the Apple Watch. Upgrading terminals nationwide is an expensive proposition, although government-mandated security improvements have helped spur changeovers.
Earlier today Apple Pay came to three more Canadian banks, namely TD, Scotiabank, and the Bank of Montreal.
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24 Comments
Nice! Not the biggest KFC fan but I love when new places accept Apple Pay. Hopefully the other Yum brands, like Taco Bell & Pizza Hut, begin to accept it as well.
Cool! Go KFC.
I will go test it out soon. Original recipe.
Got to get some fish oil at Walgreens first. LOL
Wow.... The US gets Apple Pay in 2014 and KFC get it in 2016.
We get Apple Pay (UK) in 2015 and KFC is active the day it happens, gotta love contactless!!
They need Starbucks - they are everywhere, used everyday by its customers, and will be a great horizontal expansion of usage
KFC?! Oh, that's just great. In my neck of the woods in NYC, they're closing all the KFC joints and replacing them with Checkers. It would appear KFC is on its way out and Checkers will be the new kid on the block. Apple had better get ApplePay for Checkers. Checkers aggressive strategy is to grow from 800 to 3,000 stores. I don't know if that's feasible but the greed is definitely in place. Where I live those franchises are springing up like weeds and they seem to be doing a lot of drive-in business.