Home Depot Quietly Drops Apple Pay, But Service Continues to Work at Many Stores

Tuesday May 5, 2015 5:46 AM PDT by Mitchel Broussard
While not an official partner for Apple Pay, the presence of NFC terminals at many Home Depot locations across the country has enabled the contactless payment service to work as normal at select stores in the home improvement chain. Today, however, a user on Reddit received a response from Home Depot customer care that suggests the company may soon begin quietly phasing out support for Apple Pay completely at its brick-and-mortar stores, with PayPal highlighted as an alternative solution for customers.

apple pay terminal
"We currently do not accept Apple Pay in our local stores or online. We do have the option of using PayPal, in store or online. We may offer this feature in the future, but we currently do not have a time frame for this and if we are going to accept Apple Pay. We truly apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you Andrew."
The company's response leaves an open door for the re-activation of Apple Pay in its stores in the future, but doesn't commit to confirming that Apple's NFC-based payment service will ever be seen at their checkout counters again. Apple recently updated a support document on its website confirming that Home Depot "might not be currently set up to accept contactless payments, including Apple Pay" at this current time.

Although no direct reason is given, the company's mention of supporting PayPal online and in-store is a pretty good piece of evidence that Home Depot may simply be siding with a different electronic payments solution. It's also worth pointing out that a few responses on the original Reddit thread have had no trouble with using Apple Pay in their own local stores, so either the company is keeping quiet support of the service or it's taking a slow rollout to dismantling support for Apple Pay.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay
Tag: Home Depot
132 comments


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ravenstar
43 months ago
Given how many credit card numbers were stolen from Home Depot last summer, I can't imagine how disabling a more secure payment system makes any business sense.
Rating: 46 Votes
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rdlink
43 months ago
The Home Depot that's nearest my house has been Apple Pay capable since the first time I tried it. I'm trying not to sound like a fanboy here, but if they disable it we're done doing business. And here is why:

It's particularly galling to me that a store/company that was supporting a particular technology up until Apple Pay made its debut would go out of their way to remove said technology. It was fine to take and support NFC payments before, but then Apple brought about the Apple Pay ecosystem, which, while a great self-contained ecosystem in that it's secure, convenient and protects consumer privacy, does not require merchants who were supporting NFC payments before to change anything. All they have to do to leave things in place is NOTHING. And just leaving things lie would allow not only Apple Pay users to benefit, but also users of Google Wallet and the upcoming Samsung Pay.

Now that Apple Pay, and the ensuing press and buzz around it is here they go out of their way to remove the functionality. Why? It doesn't cost them any more. Surely they are not against better security. And they wouldn't publicly proclaim that user convenience is their enemy. There's only one thing that Apple Pay brings to the game that scares the likes of Home Depot: User privacy. If they allow Apple Pay to work Home Depot is giving up the ability to track me. And that is a purely self-serving motivation at the expense of my interest.

So, Home Depot, if you are going to go out of your way to take away my convenience, security and privacy I will go out of my way to shop at a competitor. And this will be my reaction every time a merchant takes this approach.
Rating: 38 Votes
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k1121j
43 months ago
if it were my company i would accept as many methods as possible money is money and i would want to make it as easy for the consumer to give it to me as possible but I'm not genius
Rating: 37 Votes
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Kissaragi
43 months ago

if it were my company i would accept as many methods as possible money is money and i would want to make it as easy for the consumer to give it to me as possible but I'm not genius


I know right? Apparently making things as hard as possible is the way to run a business these days, who knew!
Rating: 13 Votes
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Robert.Walter
43 months ago
Not taking safer #ApplePay, demonstrates tech incompetence, base greed and lack of customer orientation. Bravo @HomeDepot is now @Walmart !
Rating: 12 Votes
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myemailisjustin
43 months ago
Email them and let them know you're not shopping there anymore!

Fill out the form and let them know...send them a message!

http://www.homedepot.com/c/Contact_Us
Rating: 12 Votes
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ZCT
43 months ago

I asked them if these were going to be able to take Apple Pay finally. They responded: "Only if Publix wants to activate it. But activating it will cost them ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS to do so."


No offense, but if your job involves plugging in a credit card terminals, you may not be privy to detailed information about how large corporations process transactions or what it costs them to do so.
Rating: 10 Votes
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ZCT
43 months ago
Sometimes you just have to wonder who these morons are running things.

The day after the Apple Watch launch my wife paid for some things at Home Depot with her Apple Watch.

We've both used Apple Pay a ton of times in that store. Now they want to go backwards and start peddling the out dated plastic card with VHS tape glued to them?

It's one thing if a company doesn't yet have the infrastructure to accept modern payment methods; in the US we are a good decade behind the rest of the world who have contactless and chip and PIN, but in this case they already have the technology, like CVS, but are choosing to block it for greed based reasons.

Poorly played Home Depot. Very disappointed.
Rating: 10 Votes
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blacka4
43 months ago
i have used apple pay at Home depot many times over the last few months. went there this past sunday and it didn't work..I was preplexed figured maybe since I was issued new cards but have not activated them yet the old one was disabled...now makes sence. not thrilled about this
Rating: 8 Votes
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rfahey79
43 months ago
In other words: we are making way too much money selling your CC info that we cannot justify allowing the use of secure payment methods.
Rating: 7 Votes
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