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SALT LAKE CITY — Smith’s Food & Drug Stores have resumed accepting Visa credit cards, company officials said Wednesday.
“Kroger now accepts Visa credit cards at all our family of stores including Smith’s and Foods Co.,” said Aubriana Martindale, Smith’s Food & Drug corporate affairs manager.
Martindale did not say why the company decided to accept Visa credit cards again. When asked about the change, local Smith's store managers declined to comment and directed KSL.com to corporate communications.
The company stopped accepting the card in April, citing high interchange and network fees Visa was charging, according to a news release. At the time, the company said Visa was charging the highest such fees out of any of the credit cards the stores accept.
The stores still accepted Visa debit cards and other forms of payment. Visa contended the change was unfair to shoppers.
"Our goal is to ensure that every cardholder can use their Visa card wherever they wish to shop," Visa spokeswoman Shannon Reed said in April. "When consumer choice is limited nobody wins."
It is not clear if Visa agreed to lower the fees, or if there was another reason for the end to the stalemate between the two businesses.
Foods Co., a grocery store chain in California, stopped accepting Visa credit cards in August 2018, according to the news release.
Smith’s has over 20,000 employees across the mountain west, including 55 stores in Utah and other stores in Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Arizona, the release states.
Contributing: Mary Richards, KSL Newsradio
