Costco now supports Apple Pay across all of its US stores

NelsonG · August 21, 2018

Apple has landed a big new partner for Apple Pay in the U.S. after Costco began accepting the mobile payment service across 750 stores. The retailer plans to include support at its gas stations, but that isn’t yet complete.

The rollout — first reported by MacRumors — follows limited trials at selected Costco outlets, including a warehouse near its corporate headquarters in Washington.

This new partnership comes hot on the heels of Apple’s landing similar deals with CVS and 7-Eleven. The deal with CVS is particularly notable since the retailer had held off on supporting the Apple service, to the point that it even developed its own alternative that is based on barcodes. Apple also secured a deal this summer to add Apple Pay support to eBay which gives it more breath among online retailers, too.

The service is operational in 30 international markets and, in the U.S., it is tipped to account for half of all contactless payments operated by an OEM by 2020, according to a recent analyst report.

The market for such services — which includes Samsung Pay, Google Pay and others — is tipped to reach 450 million consumers. Apple, though, is already seeing the benefits. Apple Pay is part of the company’s ‘services’ division which recorded revenue of $9.6 billion in the last quarter, that’s up 31 percent year-over-year.