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Walgreens to add Apple Pay support for Balance Rewards cards, reports say

U.S. pharmacy chain Walgreens is on the verge of introducing Apple Pay support for its Balance Rewards card, anecdotes from a number of users hinted on Wednesday.

Some people in the Balance Rewards program are now seeing their iOS Wallet version of the card supporting NFC by way of Apple Pay, according to MacRumors. People were previously able to add the card to Wallet, but could only bring it up for barcode scanning, not NFC transactions. The card may also show up as an NFC payment option on the Apple Watch.

In practice though, Walgreens retail terminals are so far refusing to accept any NFC transactions with the card.

Apple introduced support for loyalty and rewards cards in Wallet with last month's iOS 9 update, but retailers have been slow to jump on board.

The update also brought support for store-based credit cards, but only one merchant — Kohl's — is on the official Apple Pay roster. By contrast, there are over 600 supporting banks and credit unions in the U.S., and more than a dozen in the United Kingdom.