JCPenney Removes Apple Pay Support From Its Retail Stores and Mobile App [Updated]

American department store JCPenney has quietly removed support for Apple Pay from its retail stores, it has emerged.


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.

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

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.

The retailer began trialing ‌Apple Pay‌ in late 2015, before rolling it out to all of its stores across the United States and adding support for the payment method to its app for iPhone and iPad shortly after.

JCPenney also made its credit card available on ‌Apple Pay‌, enabling customers to earn shopping points through its JCPenney Rewards loyalty program, directly in the Wallet app on ‌iPhone‌.

Assuming JCPenney still takes NFC contactless payments, it's unclear whether the company has switched merchant account providers to one that doesn't support ‌Apple Pay‌, or has simply disabled support for Apple's digital wallet at its transaction terminals. We've contacted JCPenney for more information on their reasoning behind the decision and will update this article if we learn more.

Update: In a statement to TechCrunch, JCPenney says that it stopped supporting ‌Apple Pay‌ and other contactless payments because of an April 13 deadline from Visa for retiring legacy magnetic stripe (MSD) contactless technology in favor of more secure EMV technology.

A third-party credit card brand made the requirement for all merchants to actively support EMV contactless functionality effective April 13, retiring the legacy MSD contactless technology in place. Given the resources and lead time associated with meeting the new mandate, JCPenney chose to suspend all contactless payment options until a later date. Customers still have the ability to complete their transactions manually by inserting or swiping their physical credit cards at our point-of-sale terminals in stores, an option employed by the vast majority of JCPenney shoppers.

Rather than upgrading its technology, JCPenney opted to discontinue contactless payment support, at least for the time being.