Aldi is testing accepting credit cards in several U.S. markets, with a national rollout possible if the test is deemed successful, the company said.
Batavia, Ill.-based Aldi is accepting Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express credit cards at approximately 50 stores in Minnesota, including a single store in Wisconsin adjacent to the Minneapolis market, and in the Syracuse area in upstate New York, the company told SN in a written statement.
Aldi declined to indicate how long it will test credit cards but said, “Should the pilot program prove successful, we will consider rolling the program out nationally to all Aldi stores.”
Asked what impact the 2% fee credit card companies charge retailers would have on Aldi pricing, the company said it won’t have any impact. “There is no effect on the price Aldi customers pay for groceries at the stores participating in the pilot program,” it explained.

The parent company said in September it would begin accepting credit cards at stores in England in mid-October; it already was accepting credit cards at some locations in Scotland and Wales.
Matthew Barnes, joint managing director for Aldi in the United Kingdom, was quoted as saying the decision to accept credit cards “is another potential barrier to shopping at Aldi that we are smashing down.”
Speaking with SN, Neil Stern, a retail consultant with McMillanDoolittle, Chicago, said he believes Aldi may have decided to take credit cards — despite the 2% charge it will incur — “because the company believes the change can expand its customer base and, from its point of view, the growth in sales would hopefully cancel out the extra costs it incurs.”
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Accepting credit cards “opens Aldi up to more people, especially given the fact a lot of consumers are essentially cashless and live off their credit and debit cards, so accepting credit cards enlarges Aldi’s target audience,” Stern added.
“To say Aldi is mainstreaming would be a stretch, but accepting credit cards should certainly grow its appeal to a broader range of customers.”
Bill Bishop, founder of Brick Meets Click, Barrington, Ill., said accepting credit cards is just another step in Aldi's ongoing attempt to appeal to more middle-income shoppers.
"It's very clear Aldi is giving stores a lot of latitude at the country level," he told SN. "Part of what's happening is the company is letting go of some traditional patterns on operations. In the U.S. it has been doing everything possible to make the stores more interesting to consumers beyond its usual clientele.
"One of the constraints it's looking to lift is moving beyond cash and debit to allow customers to use credit cards. With this test, it's trying to determine how much impact that has on expanding its business with consumers it covets. And it should have no effect on pricing because Aldi is already extraordinarily effective at combining everyday low prices with promotional pricing, so the cost of the credit cards will be there but not so anyone really notices.
"It's running weekly ads; boosting assortments to 1,800 items from 1,400 a few years ago and 1,000 a decade ago; increasing labor costs by keeping the shelves re-stocked rather than using full pallets, as it originally did; and imposing markdown costs it didn't have before in perishables, with coupons for $2 or $3 off meatproducts, for example.
"So Aldi is clearly relaxing some of the things it used to do to control costs in an effort to make the shopping experience more appealing, and it's succeeding."