American retailer JCPenney has abruptly dropped support for Apple Pay from its retail store checkout terminals and app.
The removal of Apple’s digital payments solution from JCPenney terminals was confirmed on Saturday, in a response by the company’s customer service Twitter account in response to a query by a customer. While the department store chain confirmed the move, they offered no explanation for the decision.
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
Appleosophy confirms the Apple Pay payment option in the JCPenney iOS app has also been removed with no warning.
The sagging retailer first began trying out Apple Pay in some of its stores in 2015, before rolling it out to all of its U.S. stores and adding support for it to its iOS app.
The JCPenney credit card was also made available on Apple Pay, which allowed customers to rack up points through its JCPenney Rewards loyalty program.
JCPenney’s move is a definite step backwards, considering the recent data breaches discovered at various retailers over the last few years, that have exposed customers’ payment info to the prying eyes of the bad guys. Apple Pay is a secure form of payment that uses a one-time payment token instead of a customers actual credit or debit card number.
JCPenney hasn’t announced a reason for the move, but we’ll update this article to let you know if we hear anything more about the decision.
