CVS to offer Venmo, PayPal QR codes in stores

Dive Brief:

CVS will now integrate PayPal and Venmo QR codes into its checkouts across its 8,200 stores nationwide, PayPal announced on Thursday. As part of PayPal's collaboration with payments tech company InComm, CVS customers can pay for their purchase without touching a touchpad or signing a receipt.
With PayPal and Venmo QR codes, customers can pay for their items with the stored debit cards, credit cards, bank accounts, PayPal balance, PayPal credit, Venmo balance or Venmo Rewards associated with their respective PayPal or Venmo accounts, according to the company statement.
Customers won't have to pay fees when using PayPal or Venmo QR codes. CVS will integrate PayPal and Venmo QR codes in its locations nationally in the fourth quarter of 2020, per the company statement.

Dive Insight:

PayPal's partnership with CVS is part of a multi-year deal to offer PayPal and Venmo QR codes. The deal follows the digital payment company partnership with Walmart Canada in April. With PayPal and InComm's technologies, retailers can enable touchless payments at their point-of-sale terminals, PayPal noted in its statement, which may help ease consumers' wariness of shopping in physical stores because of the pandemic.

The PayPal deal is an extension of CVS' ongoing efforts to step up its digital offerings. Last month, the drugstore retailer debuted its SpokenRx app and incentivized customers to connect their loyalty rewards to their mobile app. And in June, the company began testing out autonomous vehicles for prescription deliveries in partnership with Nuro, a delivery robotics startup.

"PayPal and Venmo QR codes offer our customers a secure and touch-free way to complete their purchase with a payment brand they know and trust," Jon Roberts, executive vice president and COO of CVS Health, said in a statement. "This reflects our continued focus on innovation and finding new ways to help maintain the safety of our customers and employees."

Multiple other platforms have debuted QR code features for merchants recently, following a broader trend toward contactless payment adoption. Venmo introduced its Business Profile feature, which allows merchants to display a unique QR code at their point of sale, and Amazon Pay launched Smart Stores in India, which lets customers scan the store's QR code through the Amazon app. WhatsApp also rolled out QR codes for small businesses to include on product packaging, receipts or storefronts.