> Fred Meyers here in WA still doesn't support contactless payments (QFC, owned by the same company, does, however)

Some Freddy's do, at least intermittently. A few weeks ago, the one in Lake City had it enabled on their pads at the self checkout and I successfully used tap. But when I went back a week after that, tap was turned back off.

Kroger uses their smaller brands as testbeds for stuff and since QFC is somewhere in the bottom five for size-of-Kroger-operated-brands, I guess it makes sense.