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

[thobie]

I read somewhere contactless payment is not as popular in USA as it is in UK, Australia etc. Is that true?

The ApplePay is based on an extension of EMV standard, introduced around Europe in the beginning of 2000 (and extended to contacless around 2012 when contactless cards were introduced to customers, then later on the tokenized version of the EMV). So, in Europe, where ever you can use Visa/Mastercard nowadays, should support also ApplePay (if not using very old payment machines over >>5 years, and SW updates not done accordingly).

For example, in Finland, already 50% of everyday payments are done with contactless cards or mobilephones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV

 

[Small White Car]

Huh? The cashier doesn't need to do anything special. It's a 'card' payment. If they ask how you're paying do you say 'apple pay' instead of visa/mastercard etc? If so that's bizarre. Telling a cashier 'apple pay' is the same as someone going 'chip and pin'. Who does that?

They still have to touch the “credit card” button on their terminal and, as of 2 years ago, most of them were unwilling to do that after seeing me use a phone instead of a card.

Yes, I would tell them it was as simple as that, but why should they believe me? Hence, them calling their manager over who would repeat the same thing.

After the 4th or 5th time Apple Pay took me 2 minutes to pay, I said “I guess I’ll stop doing this for awhile.”

 

[Duel]

Im amazed at how many of you sheep would rather see JC Penny go out of business then say, use cash or just swipe a physical card..... All over a stupid form of payment that benefits YOU in no way at all!

I don’t even live in US and never visited this store, but why would i care and accept that store suddenly want to make my life harder? If they remove this Apple Pay support they have to be ready to accept outcome of it.

I live in EU and enjoy my Apple Pay basicly everywhere where i go and pay 99,9% of my stuff with Apple Pay and it’s lot better and faster than cash or card. It takes around 3 seconds for me to pay my stuff. Me and lot of others are also making line waiting times shorter. So everyone are benefitting from this.

 

[robbietop]

Cost saving measure. Expect Chapter 11 or 13 filing in six months.

 

[MadDawg2020]

J.C. Penny is still in business?

 

[chatin]

When a company loses critical mass this is what is looks like. Perhaps an outlier but any smaller and there will be a "falling off a cliff" effect.

 

[xpxp2002]

This is an excellent analysis.

I really don’t agree with that — at least not in the US. My experience in the US is the retailers simply don’t care about NFC/Apple Pay because virtually no consumers are asking for it and even those who prefer it aren’t taking enough of their business elsewhere (or there are no Apple Pay-supporting competitors) to warrant spending the money to support it.

I’ve stood in line at several local grocers, Panera, and Walgreens; all of whom support NFC, week-after-week, and watched people in line with an iPhone in hand reach into their purse or wallet to pull out their plastic card to complete the transaction. Americans are uninformed about the better security in NFC (many falsely believe that the "wireless"/contactless element actually makes it less secure) or are indifferent. Then again...I still see people who swipe first at an EMV-capable terminal.

As much as it saddens me, I really am beginning to question the future of NFC payments in the US ever becoming ubiquitous, and could unfortunately envision more retailers pulling the plug if <5-10% of their card transactions continue to be contactless.

Without a comprehensive educational effort on the part of retailers to their staff on how to accept and prefer contactless transactions, and to consumers on why they should use it and demand it where unavailable will perpetually hold back any meaningful uptake of the technology.

In the meantime, I’ll keep voting with my wallet and make sure to use Apple Pay wherever I can to help keep those transaction stats alive. All I can say to you all is to do the same, and educate your friends and family.

 

[Spock]

I saw this post on Facebook and honestly excepted it to be about them closing all stores. This is among the many reasons retail stores are failing, they refuse to adopt new technologies and when they do, they drop it for some unknown reason or don’t keep up with it.

 

[deeddawg]

They still have to touch the “credit card” button on their terminal and, as of 2 years ago, most of them were unwilling to do that after seeing me use a phone instead of a card.

Yes, I would tell them it was as simple as that, but why should they believe me? Hence, them calling their manager over who would repeat the same thing.

After the 4th or 5th time Apple Pay took me 2 minutes to pay, I said “I guess I’ll stop doing this for awhile.”

Ah, that explains why your experience seemed so out of date.

Places I shop these days all seem to understand Apple Pay just fine. Nobody has to call a manager, nobody appears confused. Occasionally someone will comment on how cool it is that I paid with my watch, but otherwise the cashiers are all up to speed.

 

[scottrngr]

The only time I go to Penney's, is when it's the closest enterence into the mall. And I never go to the mall.

 

[chelsel]

Apple charges a 0.15% per transaction “security fee” to card issuers. They were the only company that negotiated any sort of deal like this, Google and Samsung charge nothing.

Yeah, and 0.15% is going to save JC Penney's... right

 

[Baymowe335]

JCP will soon be not accepting any form of payment from anyone.

 

[Heiser]

I really don’t agree with that — at least not in the US. My experience in the US is the retailers simply don’t care about NFC/Apple Pay because virtually no consumers are asking for it and even those who prefer it aren’t taking enough of their business elsewhere (or there are no Apple Pay-supporting competitors) to warrant spending the money to support it.

I’ve stood in line at several local grocers, Panera, and Walgreens; all of whom support NFC, week-after-week, and watched people in line with an iPhone in hand reach into their purse or wallet to pull out their plastic card to complete the transaction. Americans are uninformed about the better security in NFC (many falsely believe that the "wireless"/contactless element actually makes it less secure) or are indifferent. Then again...I still see people who swipe first at an EMV-capable terminal.

As much as it saddens me, I really am beginning to question the future of NFC payments in the US ever becoming ubiquitous, and could unfortunately envision more retailers pulling the plug if <5-10% of their card transactions continue to be contactless.

Without a comprehensive educational effort on the part of retailers to their staff on how to accept and prefer contactless transactions, and to consumers on why they should use it and demand it where unavailable will perpetually hold back any meaningful uptake of the technology.

In the meantime, I’ll keep voting with my wallet and make sure to use Apple Pay wherever I can to help keep those transaction stats alive. All I can say to you all is to do the same, and educate your friends and family.

I completely agree with this assessment of Americans and Apple Pay. I see exactly the same thing. I try to educate my friends and family, but I also "train" any cashier I run into about how it works. It might take a little longer to complete the transaction, but in the end they look at me like I'm from the future and I leave hoping I won't have to explain it the next time. Slowly but surely I am explaining it less and less.

 

[apple_mike]

I really don’t agree with that — at least not in the US. My experience in the US is the retailers simply don’t care about NFC/Apple Pay because virtually no consumers are asking for it and even those who prefer it aren’t taking enough of their business elsewhere (or there are no Apple Pay-supporting competitors) to warrant spending the money to support it.

I’ve stood in line at several local grocers, Panera, and Walgreens; all of whom support NFC, week-after-week, and watched people in line with an iPhone in hand reach into their purse or wallet to pull out their plastic card to complete the transaction. Americans are uninformed about the better security in NFC (many falsely believe that the "wireless"/contactless element actually makes it less secure) or are indifferent. Then again...I still see people who swipe first at an EMV-capable terminal.

As much as it saddens me, I really am beginning to question the future of NFC payments in the US ever becoming ubiquitous, and could unfortunately envision more retailers pulling the plug if <5-10% of their card transactions continue to be contactless.

Without a comprehensive educational effort on the part of retailers to their staff on how to accept and prefer contactless transactions, and to consumers on why they should use it and demand it where unavailable will perpetually hold back any meaningful uptake of the technology.

In the meantime, I’ll keep voting with my wallet and make sure to use Apple Pay wherever I can to help keep those transaction stats alive. All I can say to you all is to do the same, and educate your friends and family.

I think this varies heavily by location. I live in a large metro area, in a new, highly developed part of town. Almost everyone in our area is 25-40 with fairly good income. ApplePay (and NFC more broadly, although I see far more Apple use than anything else) is ubiquitous here.

I don't doubt the lack of use in many parts of the country, but the lack of use also speaks somewhat to a lack of reason to remove it. Ie, they don't pay anything to keep these machines on, and they certainly don't pay anything if NFC is on but ApplePay is turned off (like CVS did for a long time). There has to be some reason that they specifically want to stop people from using ApplePay. And I think one good hypothesis was proposed, namely, that JC Penny has analyzed their internal data, and people who use ApplePay are less likely to use the JC Penny card (if they have one).

 

[subi257]

Can’t say I use Apple Pay at stores as it is. Too much hassle. Not enough incentive from Apple. This Apple card on the way is a joke gesture from them.

Dude, What kind of hassle could it be? a physical credit card is more hassle....pull out the wallet, find the card you want to use, put into terminal and wait for chip to read and bank confirmation, return card to wallet, return wallet to pocket. NFC of any flavor...hold phone next terminal and done....even easier if you have an apple watch.

 

[chrono1081]

"
It is, but that also requires trusting your Iphone as well..

Apple Pay is significantly more secure than a credit card swipe though, not sure why anyone would be against it (unless they're unaware of how Apple Pay actually works and mistakenly thinks it stores your card/pin number).

 

[subi257]

Im amazed at how many of you sheep would rather see JC Penny go out of business then say, use cash or just swipe a physical card..... All over a stupid form of payment that benefits YOU in no way at all! Chip cards are just as secure and cash doens't need to be secure because its cash! This guy who tweeted is straight up retard.... and after reading some of these comments, im starting to question this community. You literally want 95000 people to suddenly be without employment because you can't use your phone to pay and give apple their .15% cut?! The same company that will re-release another useless product in a few months and jack the price on it from the previous gen. Some of you need to grow up and reconsider some of the terrible choices you have made in your life that have brought you to this point.

Wow! angry a bit?

 

[Infernos]

Is this really a big deal? Penny's is failing. I haven't been to one in decades anyway.

 

[tridley68]

Not much of a loss i heard most of the JCPenney stores were going out of business anyway.

 

[benshive]

Can’t say I use Apple Pay at stores as it is. Too much hassle. Not enough incentive from Apple. This Apple card on the way is a joke gesture from them.

I agree. Waving my wrist over the scanner is too much of a hassle

 

[sw1tcher]

JCP won't last another year. They have been selling the same over priced [$tuff] for 100+ years.

If you consider the stuff JCP sells to be over priced, what does that make the stuff that Apple sells?

 

[gertruded]

I have an iPhone but have no idea how to use Apple pay. No idea whatsoever. What is NFC. I live in a rural area in the middle of the country and have never seen anyone wave an iphone to pay for something. Seriously.

 

[ksec]

I suspect Apple will see some push back from other credit card issuers because of Apple Card. I'm sure some of them aren't too happy about it.

I wouldn't assume this is because of that, but if JCPenney's card was usable with Apple Pay that could be the reason. I can see Apple Card becoming the default credit card used with Apple Pay for many people, significantly reducing the use of cards issued by others. Perhaps JCPenney thinks that, if people have to pull out a physical card (instead of just using Apple Pay), some will use their JCPenney card instead of their default Apple Pay card.

The whole point of using JCPenny Card in JCPenny would be for its rebate or whatever discount it gives. So if the discount were good enough people will use it, and if not or people think their Data are worth more they wont.

I have already seen so many discussion on the Web, including MacRumours about Cards with 0.5% to 2% more rebate and calling Apple Card useless. That is $20 more on a $1000 spent per month. I am pretty sure my data and privacy is worth more than that. But others may have a different take.

 

[deeddawg]

(unless they're unaware of how Apple Pay actually works and mistakenly thinks it stores your card/pin number).

"No one [...] has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
-- H. L. Mencken

 

[ryanwarsaw]

Not much of a loss i heard most of the JCPenney stores were going out of business anyway.

It's pretty depressing if you do visit. I remember being a kid and mom taking me to Penny's was as good as life could be. Went in one awhile back and it looked like a Goodwill or thrift shop.