Apple Pay has stopped working at Safeway stores. Returns “Not Authorized” error

Yes. Today I confirmed that my Amazon Chase card (a Visa card) works with Apple Pay at one of the Naperville Jewels. My Citi MasterCard has not worked at any Jewel I've tried in at least the last several months. I'm fairly convinced my Citi MasterCard would not have worked today, though I did not try it.

So you are definitely onto something.

It's hard to imagine corporate would not already know about this, OTOH you would think they would let stores know if they did. We'll await your updates; thanks again.

Today Mar 11 Pay generated "Chip Error" at Vons/Albertsons Pacific Palisades, CA.

Checker very patient as I had the same error a couple days ago - he kept suggesting

a PIN but I was entering the passcode onscreen. Somewhere I remember the words

"not authorized." Standing by for now . . Tom

Update for everyone. I have submitted what Jewel-Osco calls an Incident Ticket to our IT help desk. The person I spoke to said he would forward my report to the POS (point-of-sale) programming team. He mentioned that he thought he had heard of these errors before. He recommended that the next time I try to use Apple Pay and get a failure, I should report the store number, time, date and transaction amount. If I have time in the next few days, I will test a transaction with my Mastercard and see if I can get another error and report the data.

Unfortunately, I cannot give out the phone number I called as it's for internal use only for Jewel IT help desk. I did mention that there were other people from other divisions (Vons, Safeway, etc.) reporting the same problem. I will wait a few days to see if IT says anything. Usually they will email us back to report on the status of each Incident Ticket fairly quickly. Let's see what they say.

Thank you so much for your advocacy. I emailed Vons through their website with a description of the problem and a link to this thread. I got an automated response from albertsons.com and have heard nothing else since. Thanks again. Let's get this fixed!

Another update.

I spoke to Jewel IT help desk about the open Incident Report that I submitted on 3/14/19. Help Desk had asked me to call back if I had any new experiences with a failed Apple Pay transaction. They asked that I report the date, time, store #, amount, etc. Before I had a chance to report any of this stuff, the help desk guy said they were aware of the issue and are working on it. There is no estimate for a fix.

Knowing our help desk, I wouldn't put too much hope into getting a fix soon. But at least we know that someone at Jewel corporate is aware of the issue.

I don't know how this affects customers of Vons, Safeway, etc. It's not clear to me if New Albertsons, Inc. has integrated the IT Help Desk across all divisions or if every division has their own Help Desk.

I guess I would just suggest that everyone with AMEX or Mastercard Apple Pay cards try every now and then to see if they start working. This is not the type of fix that corporate is going to announce in a press release or anything. Just one day, it'll suddenly start working again.

I don't think it is specific to just Safeway or other stores mentioned in the thread. It seems to have stopped working for me for all of my credit cards (2 AMEX and 1 Visa) at least 2 months ago. I removed the credit cards and reauthorized them again in my Apple wallet. It appears to go thru: I do face ID, recognizes my face, pings with a DONE check mark in the circle and then the cashier tells me that it didn't go thru. This has happened at CVS, airport stores. So frustrating as I loved the convenience but now I am back to pulling out my credit card. I think it is an Apple issue and not store specific.

@RegDC, mine still works outside of Jewel-Osco and still doesn't work inside Jewel-Osco. If you are having problems everywhere, it's likely your phone or your set up.

Meanwhile, I spoke to two different cashiers over the weekend and got two different un-helpful responses:

1) Cashier 1 said she's known the problem has been there for a while and she just assumed it was a problem everywhere. Note that she does not use Apple Pay herself and she did not have an actual example from outside her store. So I can see why more employees in Jewel might not jump on this issue, if they think it's not Jewel. Trust me, it's just Jewel.

2) Cashier 2 smugly told me that his Samsung Pay watch is working, so it must not be an issue. Well, okay then!

Checked again today, the cashier was kind enough to let me run my tests (Albertsons). Doesn't work with apple watch or phone with M/C, but will work with Visa. Again, same Apple pay works everywhere else with my M/C. Cashier said she has noticed an issue. Returns "chip not read." Will resubmit issue to Albertsons tech support today.

There seems to be a variety of issues happening with Apple Pay. I am just a user and the only one I can speak to is the issue at Jewel food stores, where I believe the only issue is that Apple Pay does not work any longer with MasterCard. Hopefully that is temporary.

In all honesty, using my credit card and the chip reader is probably slightly faster than A/P. In cold Chicago weather my fingerprint reader never works and I'm forced to type in my PIN.

When the chip readers first came out they were quite slow. The read speed seems to have improved substantially so it's much less nuisance for me than it once was.

Apple Pay is going to be a fail if they don't a) resolve these location-specific problems, and b) broaden the number of locations where it can be used. Too bad, I love the technology but it would have had better hopes for success if the phone makers had all agreed on a standardized technology and payment system. The phone-specific payment methods are a barrier to wider adoption.

My credit card was hacked twice in 2018. Each has 16 numbers, expiry date and CVC.

Entering from memory is faster than digging out the card.  Pay works mostly at the

point-of-sale although you can send money via Messages - at least on Mac.  doesn't

use your CC number but a unique code supplied by Apple. They refused to buckle on

San Bernardino despite imprecations from FBI. I trust . The issue w/b fixed, hopefully

soon - as I dread memorizing all those numbers again, exposing my card numbers at retail.

Albertsons is aware of this issue. I spoke with an employee in their payment services department and they've been working on a fix. He tried to suggest it was an issue between American Express and Apple but I was quick to point out that my American Express works with Apple Pay just fine at EVERY other retailer I try (that accepts Apple Pay). It's only the Albertsons owned companies that have an issue with the "Not Authorized" error.

Also, for the record, Safeway is NOT the parent company of Albertsons. I retired from Albertsons 10 years ago and I'm VERY familiar with the mergers and buyouts in the supermarket and drug industries over the last 50 years.

Albertsons is privately held by Cerberus Capital Management. Cerberus acquired its first Albertsons stores in 2006. Other Albertsons stores were acquired by SUPERVALU that same year. Seven years later the SUPERVALU Albertsons were struggling and SUPERVALU sold them to Cerberus. Cerberus subsequently purchased additional chains, including Safeway/Vons.

Cerberus operates a great number of supermarkets under their respective names but all part of the Albertsons family umbrella. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertsons

https://www.albertsonscompanies.com/about-us/history.html

Look at the list of supermarket and drug companies at the bottom of that second link. If those chains are all on the same payment system software as Albertsons, Vons, Safeway, etc. then you will experience the same "Not Authorized" error message when attempting to use American Express (and certain MasterCards, apparently) with Apple Pay in those stores.

I have friends that still work for Albertsons and Vons. They explained that the major issues (with Apple Pay) started when Albertsons companies switched to using the point of sale software that was used by Safeway/Vons (prior to Cerberus acquiring Safeway/Vons). The very day that switchover happened in each store, Apple Pay stopped working entirely. It took weeks to get it working again. Later, the point of sales terminals became finicky and some would work and other wouldn't. Managers had to reboot the POS terminals in order to get Apple Pay working again.

This latest "Not Authorized" issue is the worst of all. It seems NOBODY knows why it is happening. And, to some degree, nobody seems to care.

Also, "New Albertsons" was the Albertsons stores that were owned (for about 7 years) by SUPERVALU. Prior to 2006 the company was known as "Albertson's Inc". With the sale of Albertson's Inc. to SUPERVALU and Cerberus in 2006, the stores that went to SUPERVALU were "New Albertsons" and the stores that went to Cerberus were "Albertsons LLC".

The current company is Albertsons LLC. "New Albertsons" is gone.

Mark

I tried my American Express through Apple Pay at an Albertsons today (in Southern Calif) and it STILL gave me the "not authorized".

Those of you having success (or not) should be stating WHICH credit card your using for the Apple Pay payment.

Mark

Worked 4 days ago at 2 separate Albertsons with Citi Double Cash Mastercard (first time in months). Yesterday got "chip error" at previously working Albertsons with same Mastercard. Will try again this weekend.

My AMEX apple pay stopped working at the local Ingles Grocery in Waynesville NC store back in February. So this seems to be a widespread problem at grocery stores. Apple pay with this AMEX card works fine at Trader Joe’s, CVS, and it also worked fine in all stores on a recent trip to Singapore and Australia. Management at the local store did not have any suggestions. It previously worked fine. Now I get the error, use “insert chip” .