JCPenney explains why it dropped Apple Pay

“JCPenney quietly ditched Apple Pay this month,” Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch.
“The retailer now claims the move was necessitated by the April 13, 2019 deadline in the U.S. for supporting EMV contactless chip functionality,” Perez reports. “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.”
“JCPenney is hinting here at low Apple Pay adoption among its customer base — as the ‘vast majority’ of shoppers pay using a physical card,” Perez reports. “That means the retailer’s decision to re-enable Apple Pay at a later date may still be in question — especially as this change allows JCPenney to fully take back ownership of customer purchase data.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: JCPenney can’t afford modern cash register terminals or are they just too busy getting their bankruptcy materials in order?
SEE ALSO:
JCPenney abruptly drops Apple Pay Support from its retail stores and mobile app – April 22, 2019
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]