We have reason to believe that Sonic, one of the most popular drive-in restaurants in America, could be adding Apple Pay soon.
According to a tweet from @GraphicStrick on Twitter, it mentions how Sonic does have NFC readers on their menus at their restaurants, but that the NFC has either been disabled or not activated at all?
Hey @sonicdrivein you see that contactless pay (#androidpay #applepay) logo that’s on all of your carside order terminals? They’ve been there for a year or more. Why don’t you enable them?
Fun fact: if you tap-and-pay with Discover, you get charged, but rest. sees no pmt.
— Graphic Strickland (@GraphicStrick) January 25, 2019
The tweet has a picture of their menu with the NFC reader built into it, but does not function. However, the green light in the top right corner of the sensor do appear to be on, but according to the tweet, it does not work.
There has currently been no word from Sonic about whether or not they have any future plans to add Apple Pay and NFC payment services in general to their restaurants. It is something we would like to see in 2019, though.
In 2019, there have already been stores and restaurants such as Target and Taco Bell that have added Apple Pay, with Taco Bell recently adding GrubHub, which accepts Apple Pay, as their delivery service for delivering orders to customers.
Hopefully Sonic will at least consider adding Apple Pay as a payment option in 2019. It would be another great place to use the service too.
UPDATE (02/11/2019): Sonic has spoken to us and confirmed that their iOS app does accept Apple Pay but did not reveal any details about whether or not they will be adding it to their restaurants (specifically the menus) anytime soon.
