The news: Fiserv and Ahold Delhaize USA are expanding their partnership to make pay by bank available for online grocery shopping orders, per a press release.

Ahold Delhaize USA’s grocery store brands include Food Lion, The Giant Company, Giant Food, Hannaford, and Stop & Shop. Together, these brands constitute the largest grocery retail group on the East Coast and the fourth largest in the United States. 

Consumers link their bank through one authentication and then can pay by bank for any future purchase.

Why this matters: Retailers can save money when consumers pay with cash or by bank, as swipe fees for debit and credit cards have eaten into their margins.

• From 2024 to 2025, merchants’ swipe fees costs rose 5.9% to $198.25 billion, per Nilson Report.
• Since the pandemic, swipe fees have risen 80%.
• These costs get passed onto the consumer: The average household pays more than $1,200 a year in the form of higher prices due to interchange, per the Merchants Payment Coalition.

How to make pay by bank work: Retailers have to sweeten the pot to get consumers to give up rewards-rich credit cards. Giant Food, for example, gives shoppers 2 Flexible Points per $1 spent and 500 Flexible Points ($5 value) after their first pay by bank purchase. 

Strong marketing of these perks could help retailers overcome the biggest barrier to consumer paying by bank enrollment: 56.3% of shoppers are unaware that payment option is available, per a PYMNTS Intelligence and Trustly report.

These incentives may stick with shoppers as they try to save through coupons, discounts, and loyalty programs: 45% of US adults use a digital rewards card or loyalty card to save while grocery shopping. 

Implications for payment providers: Enrolling in pay by bank needs to be as simple as possible to encourage adoption. 

However, to scale merchants’ pay by bank aspirations, more frictionless solutions need to be available for in-store retail beyond clunky QR code or mobile apps. Finding options that can sit in a mobile wallet with tap to pay functionality would likely increase adoption.