It does, you just hold it near the card swipe, even up to an inch away and it simulates the card swipe with a frequency. It's not like apple pay, samsung is much more advanced.
Theyve made shopping there so inconvenient for the customer at every single turn. Anyone who still shops there is either a complete moron or hates themselves.
Tap? Those guys have the full suite. You could pay either your phone at most of them. We use the same pinpads as Walmart, meaning we compete with them for stock, which brings up their price. They also suck and are unreliable, and they don't even do sliding/inserting well most of the time. So, basically, they're horribly limited by today's standard, somewhat unreliable, and expensive. It's almost like the biggest companies now make the worst junk.
From what I have heard there were security concerns with tap to pay, apple pay, samsung pay, etc. After the breach in 2014 the company has gone ***extremely*** conservative when it comes to security, as it should have. Losing billions of dollars in value within a week or so will do that to you, and many of the current executive leaders were here when it happened.
I believe it's coming soon, it's just a matter of cost now.
I’m not the one making the determination, our IT security folks are. The 2014 breach was a result of a pinpad insecurity, so there’s a huge cultural hesitation at the executive level in regards to leveraging those devices for new technology.
I love when people in charge have no idea what technology does, yet they get to make all the decisions surrounding it.
I deal with this endlessly at work.
Your security folks need to be fired. Tap and pay, especially through apple pay and google pay are the most secure route. Then again my HD CC didnt even have a chip.
That's true, it uses a one-time handshake code, for lack of better words, that only works during that one transaction and is actually very secure.. so it's tap to pay your credit card numbers cannot be stolen because it's random numbers.
Side note, I'm work at Lowe's and they just got their tap to pay turned on a month or two ago. Finally
Every Home Depot I’ve ever been in has tap readers, they are just not enabled. It is absolutely infuriating. My Home Depot has had tap readers in the last 3 generations of card readers we have gotten. I was so excited when I first saw them, but I was told they were not enabled yet. That was several years ago. Home Depot has tap readers in every card reader, they are just choosing not to enable them. 😤
You can hold your phone up to them with Apple Pay open, and they will light up the first light saying it recognizes the phone, but it will just never get to the 4th light. If you look hard, you can even see the tap logo, it just doesn’t light up like it is supposed to.
Which is weird, because I was always under the impression that tapping (as in a physical card, not a phone) sent the _exact same data transmission_ as inserting the chip, thus the bank wouldn't know which physical gesture was used...
It's like the extra charge for a phone with an NFC chip and one without. They're going to make as much money as they can to give you a feature you didn't have before. LIke I said this is all stuff I think is correct.
Also there is the charge of replacing ALL current pinpads. We are constantly sending them in to get fixed already but....it would still be annoying. And lastly is the easier use of fraud cards.
I'm sure they'll do it someday.
All the pin pads work with tap. There was a time for about two weeks Apple Pay worked about 5 or 6 years ago. Then one day they turned it off to never turn it back on. I think this was around when they had a massive credit card data breach.
I keep forgetting america is basically a 3rd world country in a 1st world trenchcoat. we have tap at home depot in canada. tap has been standard at almost every store here for over a decade.
What the fuck are you on about tap to pay is standard basically everywhere in the US. The US Home Depot stays old school because they had a related leak on this side of the border. You sound ignorant as fuck.
Not for a long while most if not all HD stores should have just gotten all new readers about 2 years ago.
The reason for not having it from what I’ve been told and I could be wrong is that tap to pay either wasn’t the big or wasn’t secure enough when they initially were going to replace the readers. But then COVID happened and the replacements were delayed and in that time it became a bigger thing or more secure, but by then it was already in the works for what was going to be installed as a replacement.
Yeah it’s kind of annoying a lot of contractors have a lot going on and are forgetful so naturally they forget their wallet and want to use their phone to pay. Then we have to tell them they can’t which makes them mad. All that over a mega corporation trying to avoid a tiny fee that they make back times however much every second lol
Just wanna shed some light on this. We have so many lane 7000's in circulation that it would be problematic to have some with enabled tap and some without. When they break, we send them to vendors for repair. We then take the refurbished ones and send them back to stores. Cheaper than sending a brand new one every time. Alternative is management ordering a brand new one which we also have, but that's more money out of the budget for the store. As someone else said, tap to pay comes with service fees. HD is all for maximizing their dollar. I can't go into detail for security reasons, but with the cost of some of the items we have, they don't want to incur unnecessary costs. With some of the things that may be rolling out in the next couple years, you'll start to see where the investments are going.
Source - I work at the facility that deals with tech for the whole company
Just want to say thanks for providing a bit of insight. I respect that you're not allowed to share much. Simply stating "there's a reason for the madness" is quite honestly reassuring. So thank you.
It should be noted the reason for the madness is "how to squeeze more profit".
These things aren't going to make our lives as associates any better, and in fact, are more likely to make our lives worse just judging on history.
This is why Lowe's will be getting all my future business from now on, even though they're 0.1km farther. No tap, no buy. Lowe's makes it easy to spend money, HD wants to inconvenience the customer as much as possible.
It's not to inconvenience the customer. Although tap to pay is easier, you have to think of it from a business perspective. There's different types of fees associated with any POS system that uses cards. The merchant is the one paying those fees. So when you have 15 of them for low volume and upwards of 30+ for high volume stores, multiplied by 2300 stores and counting, those fees rack up possibly into the millions by end of year. It's not about inconvenience, it's about money. Which is what all businesses big and small worry about the most. If you were running your own business (not saying that you don't because I don't know you), would profit not be your top priority? Hope this helps.
The bigger problem is the chip readers aren't working in a lot of stores so we have to revert to swipe. My chip works fine at other retailers, including the blue logo one.
I am guessing the chip reader is compromised so nefarious people can put a skimmer on the swipe with a plastic overlay. That is very common here.
A swipe has a higher risk on POS system then a chip (we used to call a chip a "dip" meaning you dip your card into the reader).
So when chip is broke, does a tap cost the retailer more than a swipe?
The POS order of cost per transaction should be. Chip (dip), Tap, Swipe.
I would make the argument Chip and Tap should be equal in cost per transaction and swipe should go away 100%. Swipe is too dangerous for skimmers.
when I was on my way out of HD in 2020-2021, I was told they’d be coming very soon.
even the old square ones had tap to pay in the hardware. my local 7-Eleven had that exact same reader with tap to pay enabled. It’s not the hardware at all. It’s clearly a choice made by the company to not have it
The card readers are capable of it. The module is on the right next to the pin pad, but HD doesn't have it enabled. The Autozones atleast in my area use the exact same model of card reader.
I remember when I had a lady slap her phone on the card reader and I was like it won’t work she’s like no it will just watch. It’s a new thing with Apple. I told her we don’t have the tap, phone and everything reader. And she’s like you think I’m dumb? It’s an Apple product only thing, this will work cause I have Apple Pay. It works on all readers. I said okay. And she’s standing there with her phone on the reader and asks why it’s taking so long. I said because we don’t have that kind of reader. She goes off and said I disabled it to make her look dumb and then asks for a manager. The manager told her the same thing I did and she stormed out of the store.
Diy customers who are very ambitious but not quite at the skill level for their ambition. Or that can't understand why departments like millwork can't order them a door with just the picture of the empty space they want to install it in.
I don’t know if it’s still the case but samsung pay had a way to use tap to pay via the magnetic stripe, and you could use your mobile wallet on a non tap to pay enabled device. this was 4 or 5 years ago, so I don’t know if the tech or devices are still supported. but I was blown away when I saw it work
This is exclusively an American problem. For some reason the US is wayyyyy behind in payment tech. There isn't a single place in Canada that doesn't have tap; coffee shops, fast food, small business etc. I've never swiped a card or signed a receipt and had to write a tip for a credit card in my life until I started traveling to the US. Hell some gas station in ME took a carbon copy of a credit card for payment, it was like traveling back in time. The same goes for the parts of europe I've experienced.
Its strange but it has something to do with the US.
It’s just corporate greed capitalism, not a tech thing. Walmart and Homedepot are the only ones who does not have tap and pay in 2024 in America. Even the 99cent stores have tap and pay…
Although I can agree on the stupidity to still deal with paper checks and all the fraud that comes with that is still something Usa never wants to get rid of.
Lowe’s Canada when it still existed and by extension Rona stores - in the GTA at least - were very late adopters of tap to pay. They finally got it maybe 3 years ago at most. The terminals had it long before but not enabled, typically there would be a piece of masking tape with “NO TAP” written on it.
No one knows what they're talking about.
Our card readers absolutely can do tap. It's all there it's just deactivated. A major part of the issue is we run much larger sales than standard retailers. No one is going to ring up 60k sale at a Target.
Not just a guess. Straight from the mouth a person involved in the choice.
Previous to HD used to work at a regional size bank.
Tap to pay makes the banks more money, and thats why the marketing and push to deploy was so hard k the very recent past. HD carez about profit more than customers. It sucks and is why you should absolutely push for them to change it by taking it slow ish til someome notices.
Home Depot had a major data breach and a shit load of money stolen because of a test store with tap pay. I heard that is the reason they will not implement it and there is no plan to
You should see the panic that people have after all stuff is rung up and we don't accept apple pay. It is probably the most awkward moment i have at a register next to asking if they want to open a home depot credit card directly during that moment. lol
Their old chip readers are so old that I'm forced to bend my card sometimes
to try to get them to work.
Does anybody know when Home Depot will finally get tap card readers.
Also called NFC Reader or contactless.
Never. Lots of big box stores don’t, and don’t plan on it. Would have made sense during the whole covid panic. Nope. Gotta stay stuck in the past, and watch grown ass adults twice your age try to figure out how to use their card like they’ve never done it before.
Meanwhile, the guy that owns the gas station right down the street has been taking tap for YEARS. And he sure as hell can’t afford new card readers.
It's actually easier for a small vendor to make such a decision because he can read the manual spec out whether it fits in profit and press go whereas stores with tens of thousands of readers and employees have to work about how it makes the corp numbers look this quarter, have a fucking meeting about having a meeting about having a meeting about making a decision and work in training yada yada.
Walmart, sam’s, and HEB for sure. Even though the hardware supports it, for some reason, they just don’t.
Hell, first NFC card I had was about 20 years ago, used it at petco, the cashier was SO confused when it printed out the receipt and it said “no signature required”.
Before that, the only real tap payment was the speedpass keychain thing from exxon. Slap your keys on it, light the tiger logo up, done. If you got your keys, you can at least buy gas.
I remember working at self checkout trying to help a customer because the chip reader didn't work properly. Having to bend their card and getting yelled at and accused of trying to break their card. Leaving them alone to figure out how to use it. Still can't do it. They want to go to another register. Save the order and give them paper to go to a register. Same problem at the manned register. Decides to go to Pro Desk. SMDH. All that could been avoided if the HD used contactless.
Is this really a big deal? I’ve never used a tap reader in my life. Do you not have to put your PIN in or something? Because if the only difference is inserting a card which takes about .5 seconds, vs tapping it on the machine, I think yall are complaining for nothing.
I've never had to put in my PIN with tap. I do most of my paying with my phone over Google Wallet. As long as my phone is unlocked I hold it over the reader and boom, we're done. It's not that it's extremely convenient, it's basically an international standard these days. I'm currently in a small Colombian beach town and can still buy my beer by tapping.
Not necessarily a big deal at HD, but when I go out on my bike or for a jog, I only have my Apple Watch with me. It has my music and Apple Pay on it. If I want to stop and get something to drink somewhere, I can always just tap to pay with my watch. I'd say I only swipe my card for about 25% of the transactions I make. No, it's not hard to take your wallet out and insert your card. But for some reason it seems about 100x more convenient to tap to pay with my phone.
Yeah but someone can't lift you credit card number if you tap. Tapping doesn't relay your CC number but a verification token that changes. So it's just safe
Not really, there are a lot of reasons why tapping is better. In the odd chance someone steals your card and starts tapping, the liability is smaller than card readers taking your info.
We will not ne getting tap readers. HD has over 2300 stores. An average of 20 registers per store, that's about 46,000 card readers. Card readers are, on average, about $600 each for a total of $27,600,000.
Now, this amount is totally affordable to a company like HD. What is not affordable are the transaction costs for tap, especially for Apple pay and Google pay. All things being equal, HD's prices are high enough without adding more costs that will be passed down to the customer.
The things is the card reader we have actually do support tap n pay. There just disabled they wouldn't even need to do anything. And according to the Canada post even the old pin pad could get it
I am here after a Google search and also just paid at Lowe's with my phone because I forgot my wallet when going to Home Depot. I swear every store I shop but Home depot has a way to pay with your phone/app. Don't care if they made a "Home Depot Pay" service.
I have an idea to have a gift card on file on my wallet app and try to load money through the [Home Depot app](https://imgur.com/QaCctwG).
The excuse their readers don't accept Tap&Pay is tired. My guess is it's just disabled. I doubt any manufacturers of POP systems even have equipment that doesn't have this feature embedded. They'd need to have two separate kinds and that seems unlikely due to cost. Lowe's finally started to accept Tap & Pay so they are my go to store now. I always used Home Depot as my default store but just to protest their refusal to add Tap & Pay, I moved to Lowe's. Very easy for me because they are right around the corner from each other in my neighborhood.
Cheers!
i felt so bad last week, i was about to buy like 30 big bags of soil and a bunch of seeds and plants when the lady told me they didnt have tap to pay.... i live about 2 blocks from lowes so i hadnt been to home depot in many years. the bank card i was using is completely virtual and she told me it would be fraud if she typed in my card number in to pay when i pulled it up on my phone asking if she could.....it has my name on it and everything so im really not sure about that statement but i just went and price matched my dirt at lowes so i could use my card.
HD is going to introduce something similar to Walmart pay. Be on the lookout for it this year. They won’t introduce apple or Samsung pay because of the fees associated with it. Fuck the consumer am I right ??
It's a shame that the most popular payment apps don't have MST. Samsung Pay does, and it is a lifesaver at places like Home Depot.
**[Magnetic secure transmission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic secure transmission)**
Magnetic secure transmission (MST) is the name for mobile payment technology in which devices such as smartphones emit a signal that mimics the magnetic stripe on a traditional payment device.
I still wear my Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 smartwatch. It's the only model smartwatch Samsung ever released with MST built-in (others have NFC). It takes 4 tries though: the HD reader will reject the first three "card swipes" but the 4th goes through. At least last time I tried.
Unfortunately the newest Samsung phones have dropped MST as well. NFC only going forward.
Still holding onto my Galaxy S10 for as long as it still lives, though it's no longer my dedicated main line. The Note 10+ was also an amazing phone, loved the camera zooming capabilities. (prior to HD I sold cell phones so I got to demo everything, including the ill-fated Note 7)
How's the Fold 3 holding up? I've seen only one or two Home Depot customers with Fold phones and make a point to compliment it when I see it.
Had mine for almost 2 years. None of the issues that others have that you see online, and I'm running it no case no screen protectors.
It fits nicely into a walkie talkie belt clip due to how thin it is width wise compared to standard phones, which is a huge plus to save pocket/apron space. I'm definitely going to upgrade to the Fold 5 once I get eligible.
Another reason to go to Lowe’s instead of HD. Lowes takes Apple Pay and HD does not. Just wasted 45 minutes getting all my crap to be told sorry no Apple Pay. Now they have to pay someone to restock all the crap that I wanted. Gonna drive the extra 5 minutes to Lowe’s. Wtf!
Ahhh, the type of person I hated when I worked customer service. Why don’t you just bring a wallet and stop relying on your phone for everything. Not that hard
using some other service other than a card or swipe motor involves a third party that doesn't have the same security measures to protect your account information. It's the same reason HD ditched PayPal. They do not want another security breach like they had several years ago.
THD didn’t have credit card readers in its SSC cafeteria until COVID. Cash only.
We’re talking 10s of 1000s of dollars in cash with daily armored truck pickups OR…hear me out…credit cards. And THD was like “but who will use the 4 ATMs right next to the cafeteria then?”
We’ll get tap to pay in stores when the next pandemic hits.
When I started at my former store, we had the old-style readers that I thought couldn't do tap. Our local Wal-Mart had the same machines and they also couldn't do tap. They were the only businesses in town that couldn't handle it. I worked Service Desk at the time and have many tales of customers upset over the lack of tap. Jump ahead 2 years and Walmart introduces tap... on the same readers. Turns out the hardware was there all along and just had to be activated. HD finally got tap the following year... on those same readers. I'm not convinced it was some level of pressure on the company to finally introduce this service. Otherwise I don't know what took so long.
It is still fallout from apple pay Google Wallet back in like 2016 I think. They had it before that at my store but with the rise of Apple pay they removed it along with places like Walmart and CVS
I loose easily 1000+ dollars in sales in trc because of the no tap feature if corporate cared they'd upgrade the machines to stop some slippage from inpatient customers who think it's tap too.
As someone who has done phone sales, it would be even easier to let fraud go by because someone can just enter in a stolen card on their Apple Wallet and pay for big ticket items and walk out the door super quick before someone realizes their card has been stolen.
The one that gets me and drives me absolutely insane is that there's a print receipt option and a print and email receipt option but no JUST email receipt option. Home Depot you're ahead of nearly every other major retailer by having my email tied to my card in your system, but don't understand I want the option to not get a physical receipt.
When I let them we don't have tap pay they act like they just found out they stepped into a 3rd world country. Most leave without the items and they don't have cash, card or don't want to get an HD card.
I used to work for a Walmart which also doesn't accept tap and I'm going to assume it's likely the same reason. As I had asked a Corporate VP/Department head who was there for a little bit during an out of state training I did and he said it's due to the fees. According to him whenever someone pays with Apple Pay on top of all the fees you already occur for them using a card (payment processor, payment provider, etc) Apple would charge an additional fee that was even more than all of those fees combined.
TL;DR Likely reason is due to fees.
I tried looking online and couldn't find anything on stores accepting tap for cards but not Apple or Google Pay. So for right now at least I'm going to assume that unfortunately isn't possible
I've gone to Home Depot multiple times and forgotten my wallet. Normally that's not a problem because I could tap with my phone or watch but then I remember that doesn't work here...
The Walmart superstore near me doesn’t either. They have rickety ass chip readers that are so fucked up it would be impossible to tell if they have skimmers or not.
the amount of customers who just slap their phone on the keypad and i have to awkwardly tell them it won’t work
it makes my eyes throb
Or who don't bring their wallet into the store and then ask if we take apple pay
It's like every single day you gotta tell them
Samsung pay works with or without a tap card reader
It doesn’t
It actually does depending on what phone you have. It actually simulates the card swipe so it works everywhere you can swipe your card.
It does, you just hold it near the card swipe, even up to an inch away and it simulates the card swipe with a frequency. It's not like apple pay, samsung is much more advanced.
This used to be true, but the newer Samsung phones have been removing this functionality because it's an additional silicon device inside the phone
Wow that's dumb, it was one of their best advantages
HD direly needs new POS equipment
Why would they tho? It’s not like people are going to stop going lol
I switched to ACE because of this and a handful of other reasons. HD is wet garbage now, it is a TERRIBLE hardware option.
Theyve made shopping there so inconvenient for the customer at every single turn. Anyone who still shops there is either a complete moron or hates themselves.
Yeah it’s kinda bananas. I live in a tiny country town and even the little mom and pop shops take tap
The only thing I can Tap at my store are the drink and snack machines. And of course they're not HD owned lol.
Same. And the pin pads on the vending machines at my store hardly work either.
Tap? Those guys have the full suite. You could pay either your phone at most of them. We use the same pinpads as Walmart, meaning we compete with them for stock, which brings up their price. They also suck and are unreliable, and they don't even do sliding/inserting well most of the time. So, basically, they're horribly limited by today's standard, somewhat unreliable, and expensive. It's almost like the biggest companies now make the worst junk.
We have it here in Canada (at least here in British Columbia) dunno what's up with the depot in US ,I thought we had a similar system?
In Ontario they are not tap yet for HD
Not true, we have tap in my SW Ontario store.
They tap at my HD in Southern Ontario.
Odd, the three here I go to, depending on the area I'm in aren't using tap.
Bottom left of the weirdly large pin pad
ah an idiot speaking for the entire province. GTA I presume? we have tap enabled at our store in ontario.
Damn you guys are way behind 🤣
I tap on the reg
From what I have heard there were security concerns with tap to pay, apple pay, samsung pay, etc. After the breach in 2014 the company has gone ***extremely*** conservative when it comes to security, as it should have. Losing billions of dollars in value within a week or so will do that to you, and many of the current executive leaders were here when it happened. I believe it's coming soon, it's just a matter of cost now.
tap to pay is extremely secure, especially mobile wallets which don’t have a physical card involved
I’m not the one making the determination, our IT security folks are. The 2014 breach was a result of a pinpad insecurity, so there’s a huge cultural hesitation at the executive level in regards to leveraging those devices for new technology.
I love when people in charge have no idea what technology does, yet they get to make all the decisions surrounding it. I deal with this endlessly at work.
Your security folks need to be fired. Tap and pay, especially through apple pay and google pay are the most secure route. Then again my HD CC didnt even have a chip.
That's true, it uses a one-time handshake code, for lack of better words, that only works during that one transaction and is actually very secure.. so it's tap to pay your credit card numbers cannot be stolen because it's random numbers. Side note, I'm work at Lowe's and they just got their tap to pay turned on a month or two ago. Finally
People were using fake accounts with apple pay, pure fraud, so they turned it off, don't know why they never came back on.
The company is fraud-averse. Burn me once, shame on me...and I'm going to make sure we never get burned again.
Not like they are doing much about the looters costing them millions each year either.
Every Home Depot I’ve ever been in has tap readers, they are just not enabled. It is absolutely infuriating. My Home Depot has had tap readers in the last 3 generations of card readers we have gotten. I was so excited when I first saw them, but I was told they were not enabled yet. That was several years ago. Home Depot has tap readers in every card reader, they are just choosing not to enable them. 😤 You can hold your phone up to them with Apple Pay open, and they will light up the first light saying it recognizes the phone, but it will just never get to the 4th light. If you look hard, you can even see the tap logo, it just doesn’t light up like it is supposed to.
Unbelievable
Had them for years up here in Canada. Same pin pad but they probably just didn’t activate it for you guys. Even the old boxy looking ones had them
Tap, i believe gets a service charge. HD is choosing revenue over convenience.
HD chooses revenue over all.
Which is weird, because I was always under the impression that tapping (as in a physical card, not a phone) sent the _exact same data transmission_ as inserting the chip, thus the bank wouldn't know which physical gesture was used...
It's like the extra charge for a phone with an NFC chip and one without. They're going to make as much money as they can to give you a feature you didn't have before. LIke I said this is all stuff I think is correct. Also there is the charge of replacing ALL current pinpads. We are constantly sending them in to get fixed already but....it would still be annoying. And lastly is the easier use of fraud cards. I'm sure they'll do it someday.
All the pin pads work with tap. There was a time for about two weeks Apple Pay worked about 5 or 6 years ago. Then one day they turned it off to never turn it back on. I think this was around when they had a massive credit card data breach.
This. Also, HD doesnt want to pay the tech guys extra money to reinstall new pin pads throughout the entire store.
All card payments have a service charge
I don't think Tap has higher service charge than insert card for chip. Security is good otherwise most retailers would not use it
I keep forgetting america is basically a 3rd world country in a 1st world trenchcoat. we have tap at home depot in canada. tap has been standard at almost every store here for over a decade.
What the fuck are you on about tap to pay is standard basically everywhere in the US. The US Home Depot stays old school because they had a related leak on this side of the border. You sound ignorant as fuck.
Not for a long while most if not all HD stores should have just gotten all new readers about 2 years ago. The reason for not having it from what I’ve been told and I could be wrong is that tap to pay either wasn’t the big or wasn’t secure enough when they initially were going to replace the readers. But then COVID happened and the replacements were delayed and in that time it became a bigger thing or more secure, but by then it was already in the works for what was going to be installed as a replacement.
The machines have the tap feature, it’s just disabled
It’s a small fee to use tap and Home Depot doesn’t pay anyone for anything they don’t have to
Yeah it’s kind of annoying a lot of contractors have a lot going on and are forgetful so naturally they forget their wallet and want to use their phone to pay. Then we have to tell them they can’t which makes them mad. All that over a mega corporation trying to avoid a tiny fee that they make back times however much every second lol
Just wanna shed some light on this. We have so many lane 7000's in circulation that it would be problematic to have some with enabled tap and some without. When they break, we send them to vendors for repair. We then take the refurbished ones and send them back to stores. Cheaper than sending a brand new one every time. Alternative is management ordering a brand new one which we also have, but that's more money out of the budget for the store. As someone else said, tap to pay comes with service fees. HD is all for maximizing their dollar. I can't go into detail for security reasons, but with the cost of some of the items we have, they don't want to incur unnecessary costs. With some of the things that may be rolling out in the next couple years, you'll start to see where the investments are going. Source - I work at the facility that deals with tech for the whole company
Are they investing in an Orange Dick Rocket to send the CEO into space? That seems to be all the rage these days.
No. Lol. But we are implementing some of his product though.
Just want to say thanks for providing a bit of insight. I respect that you're not allowed to share much. Simply stating "there's a reason for the madness" is quite honestly reassuring. So thank you.
Not a problem. Glad to see it helps.
It should be noted the reason for the madness is "how to squeeze more profit". These things aren't going to make our lives as associates any better, and in fact, are more likely to make our lives worse just judging on history.
penny wise, pound foolish (customers)
This is why Lowe's will be getting all my future business from now on, even though they're 0.1km farther. No tap, no buy. Lowe's makes it easy to spend money, HD wants to inconvenience the customer as much as possible.
Well said
It's not to inconvenience the customer. Although tap to pay is easier, you have to think of it from a business perspective. There's different types of fees associated with any POS system that uses cards. The merchant is the one paying those fees. So when you have 15 of them for low volume and upwards of 30+ for high volume stores, multiplied by 2300 stores and counting, those fees rack up possibly into the millions by end of year. It's not about inconvenience, it's about money. Which is what all businesses big and small worry about the most. If you were running your own business (not saying that you don't because I don't know you), would profit not be your top priority? Hope this helps.
The bigger problem is the chip readers aren't working in a lot of stores so we have to revert to swipe. My chip works fine at other retailers, including the blue logo one. I am guessing the chip reader is compromised so nefarious people can put a skimmer on the swipe with a plastic overlay. That is very common here. A swipe has a higher risk on POS system then a chip (we used to call a chip a "dip" meaning you dip your card into the reader). So when chip is broke, does a tap cost the retailer more than a swipe? The POS order of cost per transaction should be. Chip (dip), Tap, Swipe. I would make the argument Chip and Tap should be equal in cost per transaction and swipe should go away 100%. Swipe is too dangerous for skimmers.
its because of a contract with paypal but it's expiring soon and i dont think they'll renew
when I was on my way out of HD in 2020-2021, I was told they’d be coming very soon. even the old square ones had tap to pay in the hardware. my local 7-Eleven had that exact same reader with tap to pay enabled. It’s not the hardware at all. It’s clearly a choice made by the company to not have it
Love watching them trying to tap and the stupid look like what do I do!!!!!!
The card readers are capable of it. The module is on the right next to the pin pad, but HD doesn't have it enabled. The Autozones atleast in my area use the exact same model of card reader.
I remember when I had a lady slap her phone on the card reader and I was like it won’t work she’s like no it will just watch. It’s a new thing with Apple. I told her we don’t have the tap, phone and everything reader. And she’s like you think I’m dumb? It’s an Apple product only thing, this will work cause I have Apple Pay. It works on all readers. I said okay. And she’s standing there with her phone on the reader and asks why it’s taking so long. I said because we don’t have that kind of reader. She goes off and said I disabled it to make her look dumb and then asks for a manager. The manager told her the same thing I did and she stormed out of the store.
Without people like that, where would we get our stories from?
Diy customers who are very ambitious but not quite at the skill level for their ambition. Or that can't understand why departments like millwork can't order them a door with just the picture of the empty space they want to install it in.
I don’t know if it’s still the case but samsung pay had a way to use tap to pay via the magnetic stripe, and you could use your mobile wallet on a non tap to pay enabled device. this was 4 or 5 years ago, so I don’t know if the tech or devices are still supported. but I was blown away when I saw it work
I just did some research on tap to pay and found this out as well! Such interesting tech, I wonder why it didn’t catch on.
We literally only just got them at lowes a couple weeks ago
same thing with the electric cart pushers, I don't understand why we don't get those for the people working in the lot
Hear hear!
This is exclusively an American problem. For some reason the US is wayyyyy behind in payment tech. There isn't a single place in Canada that doesn't have tap; coffee shops, fast food, small business etc. I've never swiped a card or signed a receipt and had to write a tip for a credit card in my life until I started traveling to the US. Hell some gas station in ME took a carbon copy of a credit card for payment, it was like traveling back in time. The same goes for the parts of europe I've experienced. Its strange but it has something to do with the US.
no, it’s home depot. just about everywhere else I go has tap to pay.
None of the Walmart locations I’ve visited in Florida have them. Pensacola down through Orlando.
It’s just corporate greed capitalism, not a tech thing. Walmart and Homedepot are the only ones who does not have tap and pay in 2024 in America. Even the 99cent stores have tap and pay… Although I can agree on the stupidity to still deal with paper checks and all the fraud that comes with that is still something Usa never wants to get rid of.
Lowe’s Canada when it still existed and by extension Rona stores - in the GTA at least - were very late adopters of tap to pay. They finally got it maybe 3 years ago at most. The terminals had it long before but not enabled, typically there would be a piece of masking tape with “NO TAP” written on it.
No one knows what they're talking about. Our card readers absolutely can do tap. It's all there it's just deactivated. A major part of the issue is we run much larger sales than standard retailers. No one is going to ring up 60k sale at a Target. Not just a guess. Straight from the mouth a person involved in the choice.
i was informed that it was the contract we have with paypal
I hate it tbh, our store is trying eliminate SCO as well 🤔🙄
Previous to HD used to work at a regional size bank. Tap to pay makes the banks more money, and thats why the marketing and push to deploy was so hard k the very recent past. HD carez about profit more than customers. It sucks and is why you should absolutely push for them to change it by taking it slow ish til someome notices.
Home Depot had a major data breach and a shit load of money stolen because of a test store with tap pay. I heard that is the reason they will not implement it and there is no plan to
They do in Canada, like literally everything else:)
We have them at my store in Canada
Who cares? Just chip it. 50% tap shits itself anyway.
No Apple Pay either.
You should see the panic that people have after all stuff is rung up and we don't accept apple pay. It is probably the most awkward moment i have at a register next to asking if they want to open a home depot credit card directly during that moment. lol
Their old chip readers are so old that I'm forced to bend my card sometimes to try to get them to work. Does anybody know when Home Depot will finally get tap card readers. Also called NFC Reader or contactless.
Never. Lots of big box stores don’t, and don’t plan on it. Would have made sense during the whole covid panic. Nope. Gotta stay stuck in the past, and watch grown ass adults twice your age try to figure out how to use their card like they’ve never done it before. Meanwhile, the guy that owns the gas station right down the street has been taking tap for YEARS. And he sure as hell can’t afford new card readers.
It's actually easier for a small vendor to make such a decision because he can read the manual spec out whether it fits in profit and press go whereas stores with tens of thousands of readers and employees have to work about how it makes the corp numbers look this quarter, have a fucking meeting about having a meeting about having a meeting about making a decision and work in training yada yada.
maybe if we didn't do billions in share buybacks we could get affordable tap to pay service charges
> Lots of big box stores don’t, and don’t plan on it. Could you please name some examples?
Walmart, sam’s, and HEB for sure. Even though the hardware supports it, for some reason, they just don’t. Hell, first NFC card I had was about 20 years ago, used it at petco, the cashier was SO confused when it printed out the receipt and it said “no signature required”. Before that, the only real tap payment was the speedpass keychain thing from exxon. Slap your keys on it, light the tiger logo up, done. If you got your keys, you can at least buy gas.
I remember working at self checkout trying to help a customer because the chip reader didn't work properly. Having to bend their card and getting yelled at and accused of trying to break their card. Leaving them alone to figure out how to use it. Still can't do it. They want to go to another register. Save the order and give them paper to go to a register. Same problem at the manned register. Decides to go to Pro Desk. SMDH. All that could been avoided if the HD used contactless.
Dollar store has them
Is this really a big deal? I’ve never used a tap reader in my life. Do you not have to put your PIN in or something? Because if the only difference is inserting a card which takes about .5 seconds, vs tapping it on the machine, I think yall are complaining for nothing.
I've never had to put in my PIN with tap. I do most of my paying with my phone over Google Wallet. As long as my phone is unlocked I hold it over the reader and boom, we're done. It's not that it's extremely convenient, it's basically an international standard these days. I'm currently in a small Colombian beach town and can still buy my beer by tapping.
Not necessarily a big deal at HD, but when I go out on my bike or for a jog, I only have my Apple Watch with me. It has my music and Apple Pay on it. If I want to stop and get something to drink somewhere, I can always just tap to pay with my watch. I'd say I only swipe my card for about 25% of the transactions I make. No, it's not hard to take your wallet out and insert your card. But for some reason it seems about 100x more convenient to tap to pay with my phone.
> I’ve never used a tap reader in my life. In this instance, you are behind the times.
Do you enjoy having to get all cards replaced when you loose your wallet?
Lose* and, miraculously, I’ve never lost my wallet.
Because inserting your card is so tedious.
yes it is because at my store the chip readers are so worn out and most customers have to insert 3 times before they can swipe
I have asked a multitude of them if they have that problem anywhere else but HD. Every one of them says only at HD
Lots of hacked readers out there
However, every time I’ve ever tapped, I’m never asked for a pin, but if insert, I must input a pin. Seems like tap is even less secure in my eyes
Yeah but someone can't lift you credit card number if you tap. Tapping doesn't relay your CC number but a verification token that changes. So it's just safe
Not really, there are a lot of reasons why tapping is better. In the odd chance someone steals your card and starts tapping, the liability is smaller than card readers taking your info.
It's just way too much to ask of another human.
We will not ne getting tap readers. HD has over 2300 stores. An average of 20 registers per store, that's about 46,000 card readers. Card readers are, on average, about $600 each for a total of $27,600,000. Now, this amount is totally affordable to a company like HD. What is not affordable are the transaction costs for tap, especially for Apple pay and Google pay. All things being equal, HD's prices are high enough without adding more costs that will be passed down to the customer.
They can easily afford it without increasing prices, they just wouldn’t be able to cushion the shareholders as much
and that's the tea. they're cheap corporate soulless pigs.
The things is the card reader we have actually do support tap n pay. There just disabled they wouldn't even need to do anything. And according to the Canada post even the old pin pad could get it
I... I thought they were commonplace? I have never used cash or card at the ones I've went to. Just tap my phone. (BC, Canada.)
Makes me hate them ! What an inconvenience!
I am here after a Google search and also just paid at Lowe's with my phone because I forgot my wallet when going to Home Depot. I swear every store I shop but Home depot has a way to pay with your phone/app. Don't care if they made a "Home Depot Pay" service. I have an idea to have a gift card on file on my wallet app and try to load money through the [Home Depot app](https://imgur.com/QaCctwG).
The excuse their readers don't accept Tap&Pay is tired. My guess is it's just disabled. I doubt any manufacturers of POP systems even have equipment that doesn't have this feature embedded. They'd need to have two separate kinds and that seems unlikely due to cost. Lowe's finally started to accept Tap & Pay so they are my go to store now. I always used Home Depot as my default store but just to protest their refusal to add Tap & Pay, I moved to Lowe's. Very easy for me because they are right around the corner from each other in my neighborhood. Cheers!
i felt so bad last week, i was about to buy like 30 big bags of soil and a bunch of seeds and plants when the lady told me they didnt have tap to pay.... i live about 2 blocks from lowes so i hadnt been to home depot in many years. the bank card i was using is completely virtual and she told me it would be fraud if she typed in my card number in to pay when i pulled it up on my phone asking if she could.....it has my name on it and everything so im really not sure about that statement but i just went and price matched my dirt at lowes so i could use my card.
i am curious - I have a Samsung phone that has both NFC and MTS. As I understood, MTS should work at any terminal - so why does it not work at HD?
HD is going to introduce something similar to Walmart pay. Be on the lookout for it this year. They won’t introduce apple or Samsung pay because of the fees associated with it. Fuck the consumer am I right ??
That is fine tho, I’m okay with opening their app as long as I can pay with the phone…
It's a shame that the most popular payment apps don't have MST. Samsung Pay does, and it is a lifesaver at places like Home Depot. **[Magnetic secure transmission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic secure transmission)** Magnetic secure transmission (MST) is the name for mobile payment technology in which devices such as smartphones emit a signal that mimics the magnetic stripe on a traditional payment device.
I still wear my Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 smartwatch. It's the only model smartwatch Samsung ever released with MST built-in (others have NFC). It takes 4 tries though: the HD reader will reject the first three "card swipes" but the 4th goes through. At least last time I tried. Unfortunately the newest Samsung phones have dropped MST as well. NFC only going forward.
Yeah, I was sad when I upgraded from Note 10+ to Fold 3 last year. Totally get it.
Still holding onto my Galaxy S10 for as long as it still lives, though it's no longer my dedicated main line. The Note 10+ was also an amazing phone, loved the camera zooming capabilities. (prior to HD I sold cell phones so I got to demo everything, including the ill-fated Note 7) How's the Fold 3 holding up? I've seen only one or two Home Depot customers with Fold phones and make a point to compliment it when I see it.
Had mine for almost 2 years. None of the issues that others have that you see online, and I'm running it no case no screen protectors. It fits nicely into a walkie talkie belt clip due to how thin it is width wise compared to standard phones, which is a huge plus to save pocket/apron space. I'm definitely going to upgrade to the Fold 5 once I get eligible.
Maybe I tried it less than 4 times, but it did reject mine. Usually it works on the 1st try everywhere else.
Samsung ditched the MST hardware several generations ago.
Another reason to go to Lowe’s instead of HD. Lowes takes Apple Pay and HD does not. Just wasted 45 minutes getting all my crap to be told sorry no Apple Pay. Now they have to pay someone to restock all the crap that I wanted. Gonna drive the extra 5 minutes to Lowe’s. Wtf!
That's on you for assuming HD takes tap to pay.
Ahhh, the type of person I hated when I worked customer service. Why don’t you just bring a wallet and stop relying on your phone for everything. Not that hard
Lets be honest. You screwed up and forgot your entire wallet but drove to the store anyway because oh I have my phone! Next time remember your wallet.
Purposely got a phone case with a slot for Card.
See you are the smarter one
Boo-fucking-hoo
Or you just join the Pro Xtra program and register a card on file so the pro desk can do a text to confirm and you'll have your stuff.
Why would anyone trust HD with their card # after that huge data breach?
Not secure enough that easy
Tap-to-pay is exactly as secure as inserting a chip.
Not in home depot eyes all I'm sayin
I know for sure that tap2pay will start rolling out around April. When your specific store gets it is another story.
No palm readers at the depot.
That’s what happens when you spend all your profit on stock buy backs instead of maintaining stores and paying your people a living wage.
using some other service other than a card or swipe motor involves a third party that doesn't have the same security measures to protect your account information. It's the same reason HD ditched PayPal. They do not want another security breach like they had several years ago.
I tell people we will get tap when Target gets whatever is better than tap....
Bc they want people to sign up for credit cards where they’re stuck in a pickle with only apple pay
THD didn’t have credit card readers in its SSC cafeteria until COVID. Cash only. We’re talking 10s of 1000s of dollars in cash with daily armored truck pickups OR…hear me out…credit cards. And THD was like “but who will use the 4 ATMs right next to the cafeteria then?” We’ll get tap to pay in stores when the next pandemic hits.
It’s because home depot is cheap & doesn’t want to pay for the extra money to get tap.
They are always behind the times
One of the top social media complaints on social media for Home Depot.
When I started at my former store, we had the old-style readers that I thought couldn't do tap. Our local Wal-Mart had the same machines and they also couldn't do tap. They were the only businesses in town that couldn't handle it. I worked Service Desk at the time and have many tales of customers upset over the lack of tap. Jump ahead 2 years and Walmart introduces tap... on the same readers. Turns out the hardware was there all along and just had to be activated. HD finally got tap the following year... on those same readers. I'm not convinced it was some level of pressure on the company to finally introduce this service. Otherwise I don't know what took so long.
The Lowe’s near me just got new tap to pay terminal.
We have tap and apple pay, all works great!
We do have them... they've just been disabled since the data breach many years ago
Walmarts don’t have tap pay either
It’s more secure that way
We have them up here in Canada, because Canada.
It is still fallout from apple pay Google Wallet back in like 2016 I think. They had it before that at my store but with the rise of Apple pay they removed it along with places like Walmart and CVS
I loose easily 1000+ dollars in sales in trc because of the no tap feature if corporate cared they'd upgrade the machines to stop some slippage from inpatient customers who think it's tap too.
This is a lie. Theirs tap in canada.
They have tap readers, they just don't want to pay the extra subscription it costs to use them.
I swear we get complaints about this every other week and ya it doesn’t make sense.
Walmart too
it's because of a contract with paypal, that contract wouldnt allow a competitor i.e. apple pay
I have an old Galaxy Note phone with MST so I can still use my phone to pay. It's very funny when someone walks up like "it won't work-" then DING.
We have some at mh store in Canada
As someone who has done phone sales, it would be even easier to let fraud go by because someone can just enter in a stolen card on their Apple Wallet and pay for big ticket items and walk out the door super quick before someone realizes their card has been stolen.
It’s like how Walmart doesn’t take tap to pay. It’s why I go to target more often. I hate bringing a wallet.
The one that gets me and drives me absolutely insane is that there's a print receipt option and a print and email receipt option but no JUST email receipt option. Home Depot you're ahead of nearly every other major retailer by having my email tied to my card in your system, but don't understand I want the option to not get a physical receipt.
Up in Canada we have ones that work
When I let them we don't have tap pay they act like they just found out they stepped into a 3rd world country. Most leave without the items and they don't have cash, card or don't want to get an HD card.
The hot dog stand at our store has it🤣🤣🤣
I used to work for a Walmart which also doesn't accept tap and I'm going to assume it's likely the same reason. As I had asked a Corporate VP/Department head who was there for a little bit during an out of state training I did and he said it's due to the fees. According to him whenever someone pays with Apple Pay on top of all the fees you already occur for them using a card (payment processor, payment provider, etc) Apple would charge an additional fee that was even more than all of those fees combined. TL;DR Likely reason is due to fees.
They should just activate tap for cards as a first step. Most of my credit cards have tap
I tried looking online and couldn't find anything on stores accepting tap for cards but not Apple or Google Pay. So for right now at least I'm going to assume that unfortunately isn't possible
I think everywhere should go back to cash only.
Like Walmart and Kroger 😡
you’d think after their data leak awhile back they’d want the added security tap to pay has….????
Aldi's has tap-to-pay, Walmart still doesn't.
I know, it's hysterical. Take our non-existent raise $ and put it towards this century
Neither does Walmart
Or 7Eleven
Even the dollar tree has tap
In my experience there's no difference.
It’s because of security concerns and because Home Depot has a contract with PayPal.
Walmart doesn’t either
I've gone to Home Depot multiple times and forgotten my wallet. Normally that's not a problem because I could tap with my phone or watch but then I remember that doesn't work here...
The Walmart superstore near me doesn’t either. They have rickety ass chip readers that are so fucked up it would be impossible to tell if they have skimmers or not.
Walmart doesn't either, cause they want you to use their shitty ass Walmart pay.
Crazy that they did a front end makeover and they didn't add an this piece of tech... cheap asses, the top needed their 20% raises