Be aware that Smith's does not accept Visa Credit Cards any longer. I don't know if that implies that all Kroger Supermarkets do not accept Visa CC. Smith does accept Visa Debit, just not CC. I had to leave my shopping cart behind as I did not have any other card with me at the time. The cashier did not know why.

According to a press release, the grocer will continue to accept other forms of payment, including: Mastercard, Discover, and American Express; cash and checks; electronic benefit transfer cards from SNAP and WIC programs; and Mastercard and Visa debit cards both with and without PIN and health savings account cards.

The change was originally announced on March 1.

When travelling, I seldom look back 7 months in the press releases to  buy groceries. They want a cart of groceries left at the till, that's how they'll get it. Corporate mentality at it's finest.

Fred Meyer still accepts Visa.

As does Fry's in Arizona.   But they don't take ApplePay /AndroidPay (Safeway and Costco do) so they won't get much of my business until they do.

What ever happened to paying with cash?

  On 9/26/2019 at 11:52 PM, Twotoes said:

What ever happened to paying with cash?

We routinely use our debit cards for all our small purchases, including groceries.  I hate carrying cash.

We always use our Cash Back credit cards & pay them off monthly. It's amazing how much money you can get back by using them for everything.  We carry $20 change and rarely use it.

We carry Visa, Discover, Mastercard.  Discover is used solely for our Auto Payments for bills. That way if a Visa or Mastercard is compromised we don't have to set up our AutoPays again.  AutoPays are pretty safe vs. using a card for retail.  We've never had a problem with Discover but have with Visa and Mastercard.  We now get alerts when the cards are used, especially for fuel and haven't had a problem since.

We use our cash back cards as much as possible and pay off each month. We are full believers in the cashless society, so much easier from our view point and gives us good tracking of expenditures plus some protection. I really only carry the one card with me, have another, luckily a Master Card, we use if needed but I was only going to the supermarket!!!! 

Debit card is only used when we need cash once or twice a year from the ATM. Kept locked up.

Happy the rest of the Kroger stores still accept Visa.

  On 9/26/2019 at 11:52 PM, Twotoes said:

What ever happened to paying with cash?

We use that for restaurants, every thing else is on a card.

I really like using ApplePay (or Android) because a single use number is generated for the purchase.  Much safer than the chip, etc.  whenever possible that’s what we use.  

So you went to the grocery store and were inconvenienced because your magic card didn't work?  What a shame.

Going cashless is fine, except when it doesn't work.  If/when you happen to be in an area where the Internet is down, you're out of luck.  I use cash back cards for the majority of my purchases and pay them off each month.  But I also keep enough cash on hand to carry me through a few days in case stuff happens.

I've been in rural areas where the Internet has gone down for several hours to a day or more. One instance was last fall when I was in Chama, NM for a few days to ride the Cumbres and Toltec train.  It turned out there's only one data link in or out of that little community and an unexpected mountaintop snowstorm disabled a relay station, taking out the local Internet provider and slowing the wireless services to a crawl.  One restaurant still accepted charge cards because they had an old school telephone modem card reader.  The local grocery store and most other businesses posted "cash only" signs because their faster card readers relied on the Internet.

The wildfire that burned through Santa Rosa, CA a couple of years back took out Internet service for a couple of days throughout the Redwoods and along Highway 101 from Santa Rosa to Eureka.

In both cases I just paid cash for the duration, then repleneshed my stash when I got to an area where the ATMs were working.

Edited September 27 by Lou Schneider

  On 9/26/2019 at 11:52 PM, Twotoes said:

What ever happened to paying with cash?

We use very little cash nowadays, paying mostly with a card that gives 2% back on all purchases. We have stopped using our debit card to purchase but rarely when we need cash back, because of the security issues. Our cash purchases today probably total no more than 5% of our spending. 

Like many others we use a couple different credit cards that gives us cash back on monthly purchases.  As far as our debit card we generally only use that at Walmart which is where we purchase about 50% of our groceries plus get 90% of our cash.  I carry some extra "emergency" cash but we really haven't been in a situation where we needed much.  

Coming out of the Grand Canyon area last month there was a big storm that killed power and internet to a wide area.  We needed gas so we just hungered down at a station and waited until power came back up.  Cash wouldn't have gotten us gas any sooner.

We shop at Kroger stores all the time for the gas discounts. their prices are very competitive.  Smiths is just a part of the Kroger group as is Fred Myers. We got their credit card as well which gives us online coupons and bonus gas points for Kroger brands plus for the first year an additional 25C a gallon off fuel. We find for the most part that their gas stations are built so we can get the MH and toad in and out although some Smiths stores in MT we couldn't get into.

We carry several CC's as there are still odd restrictions here and there but shop with our debit cards in the main and we've had no problems doing that.

BnB

  On 9/27/2019 at 8:43 PM, scouserl41 said:

We shop at Kroger stores all the time for the gas discounts. their prices are very competitive.

Are you only referring to their gas prices or groceries also?  That's interesting because I've had a different experience.  The Krogers I've shopped at, including a couple of locations where I now am, are not competitively priced.  And, if you don't have one of their memberships, they are very high.  Maybe I'm spoiled to HEB, but even in areas where there was no HEB I found Kroger to be higher than the competition.

I don't like grocery shopping at Walmart, but must admit that their prices are very low compared to most of the big chain stores I've gone in, including Kroger.