One of the largest retail chains in the United States has unexpectedly decided to drop support for Apple’s mobile payment option, Apple Pay.

The retail chain JCPenney has officially confirmed via its Twitter account that it has dropped support for Apple Pay. While the original tweet only mentions its physical retail stores removing support, it has been subsequently confirmed that Apple Pay support is no longer available in the official app for the retail giant as well.

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

JCPenney has been using Apple Pay for quite some time. The retail giant started a trial period using the mobile payment option back in 2015. In 2016 the company had a nationwide rollout. JCPenney has hundreds of stores across the United States, so losing Apple Pay support is a big loss for Apple. Worse, JCPenney hasn’t actually provided a reason as to why the company decided to remove support for Apple Pay, leaving some customers to call out the company on social media.

There is no word on whether or not this is a temporary move, either. JCPenney could very well add Apple Pay support back in the future, but that still doesn’t give a rationale for the removal of the feature in the now.

Our Take

This is a big blow to Apple, but it may also be a pretty big hit to JCPenney, too. A lot of companies are guilty of data breaches of some kind, and JCPenney is one of them. A lot of customers might prefer to use Apple Pay to avoid that. But now that isn’t an option. There is already blowback on social media for the decision, so it will be interesting to see what JCPenney does next.

[via Appleosophy]

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