“American department store JCPenney has quietly removed support for Apple Pay from its retail stores, it has emerged,” Tim Hardwick reports for MacRumors.
“The withdrawal of support for Apple’s digital payment system was confirmed on Saturday by the company’s customer service Twitter account in response to a query, but offered no reason for its decision,” Hardwick reports. “The option to use Apple Pay at checkout in the JCPenney iOS app has also been removed, reports Appleosophy, catching many mobile shoppers off guard.”
JCPenney made the decision to remove Apple Pay for our stores, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We will definitely forward your feedback regarding this for review.
— Ask JCPenney (@askjcp) April 20, 2019
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: JCPenney’s still in business? If so, not for much longer, it seems.
I don’t know the structure, but I assume an Apple Pay transaction is more expensive (to the vendor) than another credit card transaction.
Penney’s has been in financial difficulty. In a market of discount / low-price sales, it may not make sense to offer the most expensive forms of payment. What’s their position on AmEx?
Apologist at work indeed, I can use it here in a micro pub for buying just a few drinks and the pub owner is perfectly happy to do do because it costs him virtually nothing for even a modest order lim that. So even a large, if second rate store chain should be able to handle such transactions. Hopefully people will go elsewhere to a more enlightened retailer.
Apple Pay does not cost anything more to the vendor than the cost of the normal credit/debit card would cost it to use, and in fact saves him money through lower fraud costs. Apple Pay fees are paid by the lenders/financial institutions from their fraud savings.
I suspect JC Penney has dropped it due to their inability to directly track the buying habits of ApplePay users and/or market directly to them.
More like JCPenney abruptly stops existing. Internet killed the physical store.
So much for Apple’s Ron Johnson…
Johnson was let go 6 years ago.
Is this really a smart move? I think not. Whomever made this decision was not very forward thinking. This really doesn’t attract customers does it?
All about costs. JCP are a cheap mart and every penny counts. Perhaps another organization paid them to be exclusive.
This stinks of Walmart in Canada were they stopped because they wanted people to switch to there payment system. Can’t remember the last time I was in a Walmart.
Granted JCPenney is garbage these days but I’m finding more and more stores than formerly supported ApplePay now block it. And give no reason why. I’ve had to put a few more companies/stores on the no-go list lately because of this. I think it’s coming down to how much Apple is charging for the service–and Co’s are bucking it. If Apple was smart, they’d key on eliminating barriers to entry and making AP adoption become widespread and then once it’s entrenched everywhere then adjust pricing..
Care to post a list of said establishments?
Yes, exactly.
Noticed this too. Marathon, McD’s, S&S and Home Depot initially supported apple pay but no longer do so. Publix and Lowes still doesn’t support it. It’s hit or miss. Target was supposed to add support in-store but so far have not..
Uh, how did I buy a meal at McDonalds and some hardware at Home Depot (NFC) last week if they’re no longer supporting Apple Pay? I’ve also used Apple Pay at Lowe’s just using their NFC Payment system . Target is now accepting ApplePay in all 1800 of their stores. You are making up stuff.
Apple Pay is transparent to the any vendors who have NFC point-of-Sale devices. . . you just have to input your card PIN.
HD and Lowe’s *do not* support Apple Pay–hell HD officially yanked it over 3 yrs ago. McDonald’s has AP enabled *inside* but at drive thru it is a different story. They can’t stretch the reader all the way out of the window–which is a problem w/ FaceID or TouchID. The support is just whack..
This is no additional fees added by apple to the merchant. The merchant pays their contract rates with the card attached to Apple Pay. Apple get .15 cent for every $100 from the credit card company to process their transactions, in exchange the credit card company gets less fraud.
Now the merchant makes additional money selling your information to 3rd parties. Apple pay removes this information and leaves the merchant with nothing to sell.
That’s the reason these large companies don’t like apple pay. It’s been estimated that Walmart makes $300 per person /per year selling their buying habits and items purchased.
I don’t think that fees are ever the reason why retailers don’t like Apple Pay. I suspect that the main objection is that retailers are not given enough data to track their customers, which in turn reduces their ability to target you.
For my part, I despise companies who pester me with promotions and I avoid dealing with such companies. I greatly appreciate how Apple respects user’s privacy and doesn’t make it easy for retailers to exploit my personal data.