JCPenney Has Reinstated Apple Pay in All Retail Locations

JCPenney, a popular department store in the United States, this month said that it has reactivated contactless payments options including Apple Pay in all of its retail stores.

The information was shared by a JCPenney support employee on Twitter, who also said that ‌Apple Pay‌ would be accepted in stores starting June 19th. Given that it's now June 27, ‌Apple Pay‌ should be working in JCPenney retail locations once again.

jcpenney apple pay
JCPenney earlier this year eliminated support for ‌Apple Pay‌ and other contactless payment options due to an April 13 deadline from Visa for retiring legacy magnetic stripe contactless technology in favor of 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.

At the time ‌Apple Pay‌ was pulled from retail stores and the JCPenney app, JCPenney did not provide details on if and when it might be reinstated.


Prior to the end of ‌Apple Pay‌ support, JCPenney had offered the payment option since 2015, when it first rolled out to JCPenney stores.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
apple watch ultra 2 new black

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Finally Coming After Two-Year Hiatus

Monday June 16, 2025 8:45 am PDT by
Apple will finally deliver the Apple Watch Ultra 3 sometime this year, according to analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities Hong Kong (via @jukanlosreve). The analyst expects both the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 to arrive this year (likely alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup, if previous launches are anything to go by), according to his latest product roadmap shared with...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
terminal macos tahoe

Apple's Terminal App Gets Colorful Redesign in macOS Tahoe

Monday June 16, 2025 4:12 am PDT by
Apple's Terminal app is getting a visual refresh in macOS Tahoe, and it's the first notable design update since the command-line tool debuted. The updated Terminal will support 24-bit color and Powerline fonts, according to Apple's State of the Platforms presentation at WWDC25. The app will also adopt the new Liquid Glass aesthetic with redesigned themes that align with macOS 26's broader...
iOS 26 Feature

Apple Seeds Revised iOS 26 Developer Beta to Fix Battery Issue

Friday June 13, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta. Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device. The revised beta addresses an...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...

Top Rated Comments

konqerror Avatar
78 months ago
I don't understand this. They had to support contactless payments and so the suspended the places that already accepted it? That still doesn't really explain why they pulled it from their App.
Both contactless and app-based Apple Pay operates in two modes. One is EMV, which is a slight extension on regular chip. The second legacy method is MSD, where it basically sends magnetic stripe data, except with a dynamic CVV1 value.

MSD is more secure than a static magstripe but less secure than EMV. Basically you can clone everything except the 3 digit number. MSD was designed so you could basically stuff it in existing magstripe systems.

Visa banned ('https://www.visa.com/chip/merchants/grow-your-business/payment-technologies/credit-card-chip/docs/emv-newsletter-april-may2018.pdf') the MSD mode of operation in April this year. One of the reasons they said was most foreign banks don't support MSD, so it would fail. The other reason they said was that many merchants screwed up MSD data, which I've observed where some cards work and some cards don't at the same place.

JC Penney apparently hadn't migrated in time, so they chose to disable the whole contactless system until they updated. Otherwise, they could only accept non-Visa cards through Apple Pay.

This is one of the problems with EMV, there's multiple certifications and testing you need every time you change something. There were major backlogs around the time of the liability shift in 2015.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
centauratlas Avatar
78 months ago
"Popular"???

Perhaps in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is good they are adding it back in, not that I can recall the last time I was inside a JCP store.

We were in Europe for a few weeks back in May and pretty much everywhere supported Apple Pay, with only two exceptions: someplace in Spain and one place said that you were limited to 30 GBP using Apple Pay which was crazy.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ryanmp Avatar
78 months ago
Always amazes me seeing articles like this, and the fact that this is the way it works in the US. Coming from Australia, its hard to find a retailer that doesn’t take Apple Pay/Contactless Payments
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kaibelf Avatar
78 months ago
Great that Apple Pay is on. Unfortunately, there are no actual cashiers at any of the registers so who cares?
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dblackwood72 Avatar
78 months ago
Shortened announcement... JC Penny has reinstated Apple Pay in all 10 locations.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mikethemartian Avatar
78 months ago
every time i see a jcp post i'm amazed they are still around)
At least they’re doing better than Sears which has been ripped apart by Eddie Lampart with some help from his friend Steve Mnuchin.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)