J. C. Penney Deploys Apple Pay For Rich Customer Experience

In an effort to make shopping experience customer friendly, J. C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP) is now accepting Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Pay at all its stores in the U.S. The company’s credit card will also be available on Apple Pay, allowing customers to earn reward points through its loyalty program.

Further, the company stated that Apple Pay will function with iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE and Apple Watch in its stores. J. C. Penney chief information officer, Therace Risch said “With Apple Pay at JCPenney, we`re able to offer a faster, more seamless check out process by allowing our customers to pay for their purchases by simply holding their iPhone or Apple Watch near a point-of-sale terminal, rather than inserting a chip card.”

Moreover, recently J. C. Penney has enhanced the loyalty program to lure more customers and ramp up sales performance. Notably, the program was introduced for the first time in 2008. Per the new reward program, every customer will get $10 reward for every 200 points earned. Further, there is no cap for receiving the reward of $10 per month. For all active J. C. Penney customers any leftover points will rollover from one month to next month instead of expiring. Meanwhile, J. C. Penney credit cardmembers will get one point for each dollar spent.

In an era of challenging retail landscape, most of the retailers are using loyalty program as a tool to attract and retain existing customers. Retailers such as Ulta Beauty, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) and Kohl's Corporation (NYSE:KSS) have 24.5 million and 30 million, active customers under their own loyalty program, respectively. Ulta’s 24.5 million active customers garner above 80% of the company’s sales. We believe J. C. Penney’s enhanced loyalty program will help attract more customers.

Stock Performance

J. C. Penney shares, which shares space with Macy's, Inc. (NYSE:M) have underperformed the industry in the past six months. However, the shares recently took a sharp “U” turn following the company’s improved sales performance in the second quarter of fiscal 2017. Moreover, the company announced that it expects to post substantial improvement in the top line in the second quarter in comparison with the first quarter. In the past one month, the stock has advanced over 9%, outperforming the industry’s gain of 5.6%.

J. C. Penney currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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