A St. Louis, Missouri-based retailer has now opted to let its customers pay in a "simple, secure and private way" with Apple Pay, according to the company's press release. Schnucks, which has 98 locations in five different states, has evaluated its business model and clientele to determine that shoppers at all its grocery stores can leave their wallets at home and utilize their iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch to pay in an easy and secure way. Payments Leader reports that Apple Pay uses tokenization, technology that replaces the 16 digit card number with a randomly generated 16-digit number.

"Credit card industry executives believe that tokenization is a new standard that is going to 'shift fraud patterns' in the future, successfully preventing retail hacking incidents that have resulted in stolen user data," Mac Rumors writes. "With the Apple Pay system, retailers never even encounter a user's actual credit card number and a Device Account Number cannot be reverse engineered to obtain the credit card information."

This new payment terminal project was completed in June and then certified earlier this month, according to PYMNTS.com

"We're very excited about this new payment option that we can offer our customers. To begin, users must simply link their credit or debit cards directly to their device by using the Passbook app," said Schnucks Vice President of IT Infrastructure David Steck in the company release. "Then all they have to do is hold their device near the contactless reader, and it will let them know when their payment is successfully sent."

With Apple Pay seeing increased adoption throughout the U.S., and others like Android Pay and Samsung Pay on the way, it may be time to consider your own upgrade.  When you are ready, contact Vantage.  We offer EMV and NFC capable devices including the new Dejavoo Z line of WiFi terminals and Verifone's new tablet POS solutions. In addition to supporting Apple Pay they also include EMV chip card capabilities so you will be ready as card issuers continue to mail new cards in their ongoing effort to replace the reliance on legacy mag-stripe technology. Contact us today to learn more about our wide array of quality payment technologies to enhance your point of sale.