Lidl introduces Lidl Pay

Author: Mario Schmidtgen
Date: 09.07.2019

Own payment system in the branches

The discounter Lidl has developed its own digital payment system. This will be established in Europe and has been launched in Spain. The aim here is to test how the payment system is received by customers. It is still unclear when Lidl Pay will be introduced in Germany. This was announced by the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

Lidl Pay is based on the Lidl Plus app, which was launched in Berlin and Brandenburg in mid-June 2019. “Lidl Plus is part of Lidl’s digital development and is at the same time the basis for the future by connecting digital and stationary business to each other”, says Dominik Eberhard, managing director of digital at Lidl Deutschland. The app can be used, for example, to download discount coupons.

Payments via Lidl Pay will be made by using a QR code, which will be scanned at the checkout. The test in Spain will initially accept credit and debit cards from Visa, Visa Electron, MasterCard and Maestro. To date, Lidl is the only food retailer offering its own payment system.

Competitor Aldi, in contrast, refuses to get involved. The reason for a separate payment system could be the fees that retailers have to pay for electronic payments. According to experts, these are between 0.15 and 0.2 percent per purchase. Lidl could save these costs with its own payment system. In addition, many food retailers do not like to pass on their data to an external partner.