Apple Pay expands to Target, Taco Bell, and other US chains and now covers 74 of the top 100 US merchants
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple Pay's merchant problem is finally closing. A 2015 survey found fewer than 25% of the top 100 US retailers accepted it, with two-thirds refusing for that year — a gap between card-side readiness (90% of US credit-card purchase volume supported back in 2014) and store-side terminals.
The turn came through big-box holdouts: CVS and 7-Eleven signed on in 2018, followed by 7-Eleven rolling Apple Pay across most of its 10,000+ US stores. Adding Target and Taco Bell pushes coverage to 74 of the top 100, converting the last major retail objections into a minority position.
First-order effects
- Target and Taco Bell shoppers can now tap-to-pay with iPhones at checkout, ending two of the highest-profile consumer-facing gaps in Apple Pay's US footprint.
Second-order effects
- The 26 top-100 merchants still without Apple Pay face rising pressure to install NFC terminals as acceptance becomes table stakes rather than a differentiator among large chains.
Third-order effects
- If holdout adoption keeps following the CVS-and-7-Eleven pattern, NFC wallet acceptance becomes the default for US chain retail, shifting checkout infrastructure decisions from 'whether' to which wallets get promoted at the terminal.
The trend: US chain retail is flipping from resisting NFC wallets to treating them as standard checkout infrastructure, with Apple Pay's top-100 coverage turning majority acceptance into the norm.