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JCPenney explains why it dropped Apple Pay – TechCrunch
JCPenney quietly ditched Apple Pay this month. The decision was announced in response to a customer complaint on Twitter, but without any context or further explanation at the time. JCPenney had first rolled out Apple Pay into testing in 2015, then expanded to all its U.S. stores the following year, and later to its mobile app.
The retailer now claims the move was necessitated by the April 13, 2019 deadline in the U.S. for supporting EMV contactless chip functionality.
As of this date, all terminals at U.S. merchants locations that accept contactless payments must actively support EMV contactless chip functionality, and the legacy MSD (magnetic stripe data) contactless technology must be retired.
JCPenney was not ready to comply, it seems, so it switched off all contactless payment options as a result. However, it hasn’t ruled out re-enabling them later on, it seems.
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
(Score: 2) by danaris on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:11PM (2 children)
It sounds like they're claiming they can only support the legacy swipe method or contactless post-April 13, not both. But if that's so, the rest of the world doesn't seem to be adhering to the same standards—I've visited a number of stores since April 13, and none of them have had any indication that either contactless or mag-swipe has been disabled. (Granted, I haven't personally tried to use both at any one store.)
That sounds very much like they're making an excuse for something, and my guess is that it's the customer data piece: this really was targeted specifically at Apple Pay, because Apple gives them no access to link customer purchases through their card information (even the number is different each time, as I understand it).
Or this explanation is just very bad and confusing (or even just confused). That's also a distinct possibility.
Dan Aris
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:06PM
I think the restriction is on using a legacy mag-stripe-like contact-less payment rather than the EMV compliant contact-less.
I can understand not wanting a CC# transmitted in clear-text over the air when that is sufficient to complete a transaction, the security is... totally absent.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday April 24 2019, @08:20PM
What about the chip-in-card? Which one does that count as?