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 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.
JCP is happy to share that we are working to reactivate contactless payment options and therefore mobile wallet transactions will be accepted in all of our stores by June 19th.
— Ask JCPenney (@askjcp) June 14, 2019
Prior to the end of Apple Pay support, JCPenney had offered the payment option since 2015, when it first rolled out to JCPenney stores.
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Top Rated Comments
(View all)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.
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.
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.