Nordstrom To Enable Apple iPay

Nordstrom will don the wardrobe of Apple’s apparel mobile payment partner, according to a report Tuesday (Sept. 2) in Bank Innovation, which noted that Nordstrom is suddenly sporting the identical mobile POS used in Apple Stores.

“Nordstrom employees, who requested anonymity, said that the department store chain upgraded its mobile POS terminals ‘a few weeks ago’ with hardware that will allow it to work with the ‘most recent iPhones.’ Our source said that the two companies had a ‘contract’ and that the specifics of these contracts weren’t available to the public yet,” the story said. “We verified that these terminals are the same ones that the Apple Store is currently utilizing.”

The new mobile POS units use the Lightning port, which Apple has used for the last couple of iPhone models and has said it will use for the foreseeable future.

“Other merchants — like Ralph Lauren — have made similar upgrades to their mobile POS systems to work with the iPhone 5S. Apple has partnered with other fashion brands in the past to unveil new products and features. Burberry premiered the new camera features in the iPhone 5S last September during the 2013 New York Fashion Week,” the story said. “There were other companies in the running to join Apple’s payments initiative. We were told that these merchants lost out to Nordstrom because they did not have as many physical stores.”

Nordstrom says that it has stores in 36 U.S. states: “116 full-line stores, 151 Nordstrom Rack locations, two Jeffrey boutiques and one clearance store.”