Does Harris Teeter Take Apple Pay? (& What Are Your Other Options)

Although Apple Pay is widely used as a payment method by a lot of popular brands due to the ease it provides its users, not all brands accept the popular payment method. If you’ve ever walked into a grocery store and used Apple Pay for payment, you’ll understand the ease that comes with using the payment system, however, if you’ve ever walked into Harris Teeter (a popular grocery chain in America) you must have wondered if Harris Teeter accepts Apple Pay as a payment method. Well, here’s the answer to your question.

Although Apple Pay is an accepted payment method when you place an online grocery order, Harris Teeter doesn’t accept Apple Pay at any of its locations. Apple Pay is one of the most convenient modes of payment but still, Harris Teeter does not accept it as a mode of payment in its physical stores.

In this piece, I’ll share with you why Harris Teeter doesn’t accept Apple Pay and some other payment methods that you can use in place of Apple Pay. 

Does Harris Teeter Accept Apple Pay?

Unfortunately, Harris Teeter doesn’t accept Apple Pay as a payment method in its physical stores. Although Apple Pay is a very safe, and secure method of payment used by most customers and stores, Apple Pay isn’t one of those grocery stores that employ the payment method. 

If you use Apple Pay and want to get groceries from Harris Teeter, you’ll need to purchase your groceries from its online store as Apple Pay can be used as a payment method on the online store. 

A lot of customers have voiced their opinions about the unavailability of Apple Pay in Harris Teeter and the popular grocery chain says the complaints have been laid to their senior management. There’s been no announcement about the addition of Apple Pay to any Harris Teeter stores as of the present. 

Harris Teeter is a popularly known grocery chain that operates in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Delaware, Maryland, and Georgia. They have quite a reputation for their general grocery, frozen foods, meat, produce, seafood, dairy, deli, snacks, beer, and wine. The grocery company has over 261 locations spread all over America and is a subsidiary of the largest supermarket operator in the United States, Kroger Stores. 

Kroger owns 14 grocery store brands, including Harris Teeter and according to grocerydrive.com, Kroger has begun piloting mobile payments, not leaving out Apple Pay, in over 60 stores in the Seattle area. This may be a sign that Kroger is beginning to adopt Apple Pay in its stores and we may see Apple Pay being rolled out in all Kroger stores, including its subsidiary stores like Harris Teeter. However, this is still a speculative report. 

But as of this moment, most Kroger stores, including its subsidiary store, Harris Teeter, do not take Apple Pay as a method of payment in their physical stores.

Why Harris Teeter Doesn’t Take Apple Pay

While Harris Teeter offers various other payment methods, the grocery store hasn’t disclosed any particular reasons why Apple Pay isn’t added as a method of payment in their physical stores.

Even when a Customer made inquiries on Twitter directly to Harris Teeter’s Twitter account about why there was a sign saying that the store doesn’t use Apple Pay’s functionality, the store’s account replied that they currently do not offer Apple Pay.

This reply made some Twitter users who had been looking up information about Harris Teeter and Apple Pay disappointed and confused as to why they wouldn’t accept Apple Pay. Even after customers have raised their opinions that now, more than ever, is the best time for Harris Teeter to be accepting contactless payments, especially from Apple Pay which is one of the fastest-growing payment methods in recent years, Harris Teeter isn’t still yielding to accept Apple Pay.

This has made a lot of consumers who used to patronize the store in recent years wonder why the sudden cancellation of Apple Pay because Apple Pay was one of the store’s payment methods in previous years.

There are speculations that the reason behind the nonacceptance of Apple Pay as a payment method in Harris Teeter’s physical stores is because Kroger, who’s the parent company of Harris Teeter, launched its payment portal “Kroger Pay” in 2019.

As reported by Wealth Quint, Kroger Pay is a contactless and QR code-based payment system that will be adopted as a payment method in all Kroger Stores, and its subsidiaries, including Harris Teeter nationwide. The application is supposed to be a replacement for Apple Pay as it will be solving the same problems as Apple Pay. 

Managed by Kroger, the payment portal provides the same ease of payment as Apple Pay hence why there was the need to remove Apple Pay from all of Kroger Stores, and its subsidiaries including Harris Teeter. Kroger Pay will be used to accept payments from customers across all Harris Teeter stores nationwide soon. 

The launch of Kroger pay is speculated to have been the reason why Harris Teeter removed Apple Pay as a payment method in its physical store. However, as of this moment, Harris Teeter has not released a statement about the reason why customers cannot use Apple Pay as a payment method in its stores and if Apple Pay will be accepted as a payment method in its physical stores soon. 

What Other Payment Options Does Harris Teeter Offer?

Since consumers checking out of Harris Teeter stores can’t make payments with Apple Pay, the following are other payment methods accepted by the grocery chain:

• Visa Cards
• Discover Cards
• American Express Cards
• Debit Cards
• Prepaid Cards
• Harris Teeter Rewards Mastercard
• Harris Teeter gift cards
• EBT cards
• Cash
• WIC (majorly at participating locations)

It’s important to note that when you’re paying for your groceries at the checking out points, it’s better to insert your chip card into the card reader instead of sliding the magnetic strip of your card through the point of sale (POS) machine. 

Although Harris Teeter pharmacies have already adopted Kroger Pay as a payment method, we haven’t seen Kroger Pay being adopted in all Harris Teeter stores nationwide. This may be due to its development process as the payment portal is still undergoing major developments. The payment portal, presently, can be linked to any major debit, credit, or prepaid card and also allows customers to earn fuel points and grocery rewards. 

However, in the coming months, we may see the adoption of Kroger pay in all Kroger-owned Stores nationwide, including Harris Teeter since Kroger is its parent company. But for now, according to Harris Teeter’s management, there’s work going on underground in adopting a contactless payment method for customers to easily make payments for their groceries across the nation.

Sooner or later, we may see the grocery chain adopt Apple Pay as a payment method to satisfy the requests of customers who wish to be able to make their grocery payments with Apple Pay or a nationwide adoption of Kroger pay to allow consumers to perform contactless payments at Harris Teeter grocery stores.