The merchant reaction to Apple Pay has varied across the board since the platform’s release in October of last year. Some, like Whole Foods, McDonald’s and Disney, jumped up ASAP and never looked back. Other merchants, notably those who have signed on with CurrentC, seem to have taken a pass on Apple Pay, at least for the time being.
And then there are the “wait and see” crowd – those who didn’t jump on the bandwagon immediately but instead waited to dip their toes in a few months in after seeing if Apple Pay would get any traction with consumers.
Chipotle is one such business.
“Well, right now, we don’t have imminent plans to roll out ApplePay support. It’s something we’re considering for 2015. There are considerable technological constraints to implementing it just based on the way payments are processed with our system. We are in the process of readying the launch of our new ordering app in November. And when we do a rev of that — in the middle of next year is our anticipated time — we might include ApplePay. It’s just a little bit too early for us to tell just given that we haven’t sorted out all of the back-end issues,” Chipotle Chief Marketing Officer Mark Crumpacker remarked during an earnings conference call last October.
It seems those back-end issues are starting to recede, as Chipotle reportedly remains “very interested” in Apple Pay as of the ICR XChange in Florida this year.
At this point it remains unclear how total Chipotle’s interest in Apple actually is. The integration of Apple Pay could only apply to the POS machines within stores, or it could extend to the Chipotle app where users can pre-order food and pick it up.
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