Plenty of local laundromats have apps and free Wi-Fi, but a new Atomic Laundry in East Cambridge is leading the way back to 2014, the year Apple Pay was introduced, with a modest upgrade of letting customers pay by tapping a phone.
Atomic tells customers it accepts Apple Pay, though the tech by a company called FasCard accepts any tap-to-pay method, including the ones introduced in 2015 by Google and Samsung. (Apple has 92 percent market share and is is accepted at more than 90 percent of U.S. retailers, according to Capital One Shopping research in January.) “I think there are others in the area,” said JP Krueger, co-owner of Atomic with Meredith Krueger. But taking Apple Pay at a laundromat is “a relatively new thing.”
The 40-year-old one at 564 Cambridge St. – called Suds-Zo until that business’ owners “just disappeared,” JP Krueger said – has been brightened and equipped with a dozen new washers, which helps explain why there’s no phone readers at the Somerville Atomics in Union Square and Winter Hill, the former Community Laundry shops: “They’re not actually that cheap, and we’ve done a major overhaul at all three locations.” The couple was happy to discover that Suds-Zo’s 14 dryers didn’t need replacing.
All three Atomic locations take quarters, cash and cards despite being unattended storefronts, which means occasionally running out of quarters as people use them for parking. “Sometimes, instead of going to a bank, people go to the laundromat,” JP Krueger said. The other Atomics will likely get the readers within the next couple of years.
William Vivas, the entrepreneur behind the WashLoft app and its short-lived storefront near Porter Square, said laundry is just a slow-moving industry. It’s dominated by small, family-owned shops and “a few big players who dictate the speed of innovation.” There’s little need to change how things are done, such as by inviting customers to use Apple Pay as they do for everything else, “until somebody comes in to disrupt it,” he said.
Though the Cambridge Street location of Atomic Laundry has started to take customers, its official grand opening is 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. July 19, when the first 50 customers will get free $10 laundry cards, Meredith Krueger said.
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