Rite Aid will support Google Wallet and Android Pay

Announced by Rite Aid this morning, the pharmacy chain will now accept Google Wallet and Apple Pay mobile payments nationwide beginning this upcoming Saturday, August 15. Rite Aid also plans to accept Android Pay once that service launches.

The support will be available through all of the company’s stores across the country, which total a whopping almost 4,600.

Rite Aid was among several retailers who initially shut out Apple Pay.

With Rite Aid reversing its stance, most of the MCX holdouts have recognized how popular Apple Pay, and mobile payments in general, are becoming, and have changed their tune.

Rite Aid and CVS spurred a controversy last year after disabling Apple Pay and Google Wallet as payment methods last year, likely because both are members of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium, which has its own mobile payments service called CurrentC. Other MCX members that remain without Apple Pay support include Walmart, Target and Lowe’s.

“By accepting mobile payments, we’re able to offer Rite Aid customers an easy and convenient checkout process, which we know is important to them”, Rite Aid CEO Ken Martindale said in a statement. Competing drug store chain Walgreens has officially accepted Apple Pay since launch while CVS remains a hold out.

CurrentC deviates from Apple Pay in significant ways: It doesn’t use NFC, it doesn’t require fingerprint authentication to verify transactions, and the service stores your financial data encrypted in the cloud, rather than storing the details in a physical chip, the Secure Element, in your phone.