Home Depot will soon officially gain support for Apple Pay after users this week noticed it had started quietly blocking the platform, the company tells Bloomberg.
Users have had success using Apple Pay at Home Depot stores since the service launched in October last year— Home Depot uses MasterCard Paypass terminals that technically support the NFC-based payments platform— but now the company appears to have stopped accepting it as it issues a statement touting rival PayPal. The company since confirmed, however, that it does plan to officially support Apple Pay following upgrades to its in-store hardware in the near future.
From Bloomberg:
The retailer is updating its systems and intends to offer Apple Pay after the upgrade is complete, Home Depot spokesman Steve Holmes said, without providing a timetable for the rollout. The chain, which currently accepts PayPal, also may add other kinds of mobile payment, he said.
Apple Pay will eventually come to all of Home Depot’s 2000 stores, which the report points out would make it the largest retailer pushing the iPhone payments.
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That was fast. Got an email back from emailing the CEO asking for my phone number so she could call.
Why would Home Depot disable Apple Pay just to re-enable it again?
Because while you’ve heard that some people had success using it, what you didn’t hear about were the reports of people having issues, failed transactions and whatever other mess might have come from unofficial and untested support for a new technology.
Apple and Home Depot are probably also going for the PR angle of launching Apple Pay at HD (which is good for both of them). If it already works then they can’t put out a press release that HD is starting to accept it.
That’s strange. i use apple pay with home depot all the time. did i miss something?
Yes, you missed the fact that Home Depot has never officially supported Pay. It may have worked but they have now shut it down for their own reasons. As another poster mentioned there may have been issues because of untested and unofficial support. Who knows. Now Home Depot says official support is coming back soon but with no details or timetable.
For me, AP for a Chase Visa account worked – mostly. But the Citi MasterCard never did. It said that it did (phone said “Done”) but then declined the transaction. This happened at several HD stores so it was not a store-specific problem.
It was working for my Visa but not my MasterCard last week. A little bit of a roller coaster but glad that they will become an official supporter. Being official means that it should be less hit and miss as Home Depot.
Having Best Buy and Home Depot is a pair of very significant merchants supporting Apple Pay.
Wonder if/ Hope this incentivizes Lowe’s/Sears to embrace Apple Pay/NFC.
Forgive my ignorance, but is it that they disabled ApplePay, or that all NFC was disabled? Can you only block ApplePay?
From my understanding all NFC is blocked, even tap and go cards.
There are places that specifically block Pay and no other NFC alternatives. Best Buy will stop doing it this Fall, Walmart remains hardcore about it. Those places that could take Pay but intentionally block it, those are the places I personally boycott.
If ANYONE should embrace ApplePay, it’s HD after that epic hack. I’m biased because I shop there all the time and my card was one that was compromised. I was on a business trip when my card stopped working. I was unpleased.
I have a sacrificial card that I use there now, but I would like to get back to the primary.
My debit card has been zapped twice, I suspect from Home Depot activity. The chip card and touch less equipment exists, but has never been turned on at my H.D. (Boston area). I would want to think they really want to put this stuff behind them and get this to work right. But they keep screwing it up.
So THAT is what happened. Used it multiple times until recently not working…
So …, it’s been 9 months Home Depot. How “soon” is “soon?”
My local store said that their software for accepting contactless payment interfered with their chip readers which they were required to have by October 1. The irony is that because people were so unfamiliar with the chip readers, they, along with many other retailers by me, disabled that functionality for the holidays, and are slowly turning it back on now that the holidays are over. Gotta love retail!