“Can one of America's largest grocers use the highest-frequency retail category — the weekly grocery run — to pull customer payments off card rails and recapture interchange?”
Kroger is a 140-year-old grocery retailer that has steadily layered embedded financial services onto its core supermarket business — a branded Mastercard credit card, a REWARDS debit card linked directly to customer checking accounts, in-store Money Services (check cashing, bill pay, money transfers via Western Union/Ria, money orders, prepaid cards), and the Kroger Pay in-app wallet. Its financial-services ambition is defensive and interchange-driven: grocery is the highest-frequency retail category in the US, and Kroger is exploring pay-by-bank rails alongside peers Walmart and Ahold Delhaize to route transactions off Visa/Mastercard. Payment processing was consolidated under Worldpay in a 2025 exclusive multi-year agreement.