The adoption of contactless payments has transformed the retail checkout experience over the past several years. What was once viewed as an emerging payment technology has become a standard feature at major retailers, driven by consumer demand for speed, convenience, and security. Retailers such as Target played an important role in accelerating contactless payment adoption by enabling mobile wallets and tap-to-pay cards at checkout. Today, contactless payments are a mainstream payment option across much of the retail industry, supported by widespread merchant acceptance and growing consumer familiarity.
Add Target stores to the list of brick-and-mortar merchants going contactless. As the following Retail Dive article reports, Target will be accepting the universal mobile pays as well as contactless Mastercard and Visa cards.
Target announced it will accept contactless payments, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and contactless cards from Visa and Mastercard at all of its roughly 1,850 U.S. store locations, according to the retailer’s A Bullseye View blog.
Checkout terminals at Target stores will now have an activated contactless symbol, allowing shoppers who have enabled mobile payment capability on their smartphones or wearables to pay by holding the device near the terminal’s card reader. Shoppers with contactless credit or debit cards can tap their cards on the reader screen to pay.
In addition to gaining acceptance at Target in the coming weeks, Apple Pay will now also be accepted in-store at all 3,000 Speedway locations and more than 245 Hy-Vee stores in the Midwest, according to an Apple press release. In the next few months, more than 7,000 Taco Bell and 2,200 Jack in the Box locations will adopt it as well.
Contactless payments are gathering momentum at merchant POS checkouts especially among the universal mobile pays Apple, Google, and Samsung. The real question is whether consumers will choose to use these mobile methods more frequently than they have been. Integrated merchant mobile apps that do more than just make a payment have seen rising success such as at Starbucks and Dunkin’. However, the universal pays are achieving widespread acceptance across many merchant brands. But as Mastercard and Visa offer more contactless plastic cards with cashback and other loyalty rewards, many consumers may still not gravitate to pay with their smartphones.
Looking Back: Contactless Payments Go Mainstream
When Target announced support for contactless payments in 2019, the U.S. payments market was still in the early stages of adoption. Since then, contactless cards have become standard issuance products for many financial institutions, and most major retailers now support tap-to-pay transactions. Consumer behavior also shifted significantly during the pandemic, which accelerated demand for touch-free payment experiences and increased usage of mobile wallets and contactless cards.
The Current State of Contactless Payments
Today, contactless payments represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the payments industry. Consumers can choose from multiple payment options, including contactless debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other digital wallets. While merchant-specific mobile apps continue to offer loyalty and rewards benefits, universal payment solutions have gained broad acceptance because they work across thousands of retailers without requiring consumers to download additional applications.
Target’s decision to adopt contactless payments reflected a broader shift that has since reshaped the retail payments landscape. As tap-to-pay technology, mobile wallets, and contactless cards have become commonplace, consumers now expect fast and frictionless checkout experiences wherever they shop. While merchant-branded apps continue to offer differentiated loyalty experiences, the widespread acceptance of contactless payments demonstrates the value of universal payment solutions that combine convenience, security, and broad usability across the retail ecosystem.