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JCPenney Removes Apple Pay Support From Its Retail Stores and Mobile App [Updated]
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He’s not asking for apps to go back to 32 bit...
I, like him, have apps I’d like to use but the developers have stopped making updates for them
In reading many of these replies, it sounds like contactless payment is or at least has been less widely accepted/supported in the US. Is that true?
Here in Canada, I use my iPhone/Apple Pay for about 95% of my transactions and have done so for years. Every store, restaurant and even tiny retailers like mall kiosks and farmers market vendors accept contactless payment and there is nothing distinguishing Apple Pay as a different form. If they accept tap, they accept Apple Pay. I haven’t carried cash for at least a couple of years and on the rare occasion that a retailer only accepts cash or debit card (and not a CC), I also have my debit card set up in Apple Pay.
I really don’t understand those mentioning inconvenience and lack of security. There is no more convenient way to pay than holding your phone or watch and waving it over a terminal for a second. And Apple Pay uses unique transaction numbers, rather than sending your actual CC number to the terminal. Definitely more secure than tapping your card.
Also, someone should tell the angry “you’re all horrible people because you don’t support JC Penney and because you buy Apple products” person that he or she should probably be applying for a job outside of JC Penney because his employer won’t be in business for long. That said, the self-righteous rant was pretty adorable.
Here in Canada, I use my iPhone/Apple Pay for about 95% of my transactions and have done so for years. Every store, restaurant and even tiny retailers like mall kiosks and farmers market vendors accept contactless payment and there is nothing distinguishing Apple Pay as a different form. If they accept tap, they accept Apple Pay. I haven’t carried cash for at least a couple of years and on the rare occasion that a retailer only accepts cash or debit card (and not a CC), I also have my debit card set up in Apple Pay.
I really don’t understand those mentioning inconvenience and lack of security. There is no more convenient way to pay than holding your phone or watch and waving it over a terminal for a second. And Apple Pay uses unique transaction numbers, rather than sending your actual CC number to the terminal. Definitely more secure than tapping your card.
Also, someone should tell the angry “you’re all horrible people because you don’t support JC Penney and because you buy Apple products” person that he or she should probably be applying for a job outside of JC Penney because his employer won’t be in business for long. That said, the self-righteous rant was pretty adorable.
For everyone outside of America, our point of sale terminals are a disparate mess. The reason for this is because there are so many competing standards and our government opted out of setting regulations that would have standardized how transactions are processed. Planet Money did an episode about this a few years back. It's not likely going to get better anytime soon, so stories like this will continue to baffle citizens outside the US.
I can't believe JCP was losing that much money to Apple Pay transactions....most customers at my Local Penney stores are white-haired 70+ year old women with Tracfone flip models that pay with cash. I can't see Apple Pay being more than a blip on the total transactions graph.
Paying in America seems very backward compared to how it works in the UK and Europe. It seems very strange a big US Shop would do this!
Yep. Pretty much. Apple needs to pay me to use it. Their upcoming credit card is a joke in this regard.
No reason? But everyone else in the payment chain (payment processor, bank, merchant, credit card network, terminal provider, etc.) is entitled to collect a commission?
It’s standard procedure to collect points in these scenarios. Why is it only bad to you when Apple does it?
The historical reason for all this is that the telecommunication network in the U.S. has been historically more reliable, so credit card authentication could generally rely on centralized processing. In other countries there was considered a need to move more of the authentication to point-of-sale because centralized processing couldn’t always be relied upon. This led to the adoption of chip-and-pin, etc. where in the U.S. there was considered no need. As a result, contactless was already a thing by the time Apple Pay and google pay came around, but in the U.S. we were still always swiping magstripes, and it was more of a culture shock.
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You should have a passcode on your phone, in any case.
Senseless statement. Doesn’t fit the thread at all.
Same experience. I remember when Sears was thriving as well. Way back when Disney sold all their characters through Sears. My Aunt was an East Coast Manager for Women’s Clothing there. Every Christmas when I was “the age” I would get to go to Sears and pick out a giant Winnie- the- Pooh character. Man I feel dated.
It’s a huge hassle. Instead of having your credit card number stolen every time a merchant’s computers are hacked and having the bank automatically assign you a new card so that you get to have the fun of going through your list of a dozen autopays and changing them to the new number before payment fails, you have to figure out some other way to spend your time.
But it’s so much easier for people to assume JCP dropped support because Apple is greedy.
It's certainly true in large parts of the US. I live in Portland now, and Apple Pay is taken all over the place there. Because many restaurants are local (not chains), they use iPads/Square terminals for registers and almost all take Apple Pay.
When I travel for work, mostly to Chicago and California, there are lots of places that don't accept any form of contactless payment. Seems to be the larger, more antiquated chains in my experience.
Too much of a hassle to tap a button twice?
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Merchants who accept Apple Pay do not pay any additional fees. Continue to be amazed that people type away whatever thoughts come into their brain without bothering to learn the facts.
Apple is entitled to collect a commission on Apple Pay transactions because the parties agreeing to pay Apple that commission see value in working through Apple Pay. Apple has offered them something which they think is worth paying for.
For one thing, they get increased security which can reduce costs related to fraud. For another, making it more convenient for some people to use their credit cards makes those people more likely to use their credit cards. They want to be the default card in people's Apple Pay set ups so that their cards get used more often. If they don't work with Apple Pay, some of their customers might not use them as much or might stop using them altogether. So they're giving a piece of the interchange fee pie to Apple so that they can do more business (and collect more interchange fees as well as, from some customers, more interest and other fees) and because it might reduce some of their costs.
Curious that you didn't list the floppy disc, CRT monitors, and 8-bit CPUs.
Every credit card in the US has a security chip embedded. Further, "chip and pin" isn't much different for point-of-sale security as US banks had already implemented very sophisticated anti-fraud measures anyway.
No.
Apple Pay isn’t any more expensive to the merchant than paying with a physical card.
I’m using Mastercard and the cut is divided between Apple, the issuing bank and Mastercard. The banks are getting less than they used to since Apple takes a cut.
But for the merchant there is no difference. That’s how it works in Europe at least. Merchants here can’t even stop people from using Apple Pay. If NFC is supported (it is everywhere where I live), then Apple Pay also works.
Ps. Apple’s profit margins have remained the same for the last ten years. They are not milking anyone any more than they did five or ten years ago.
Perhaps noteworthy is that JC Penny has always hated credit cards.
They were probably the last department store to accept credit cards of any type, let alone have one of their own. The joke used to be that the JC stood for "just cash."
They were probably the last department store to accept credit cards of any type, let alone have one of their own. The joke used to be that the JC stood for "just cash."