Sephora Rolls Out Apple Pay In All Bay Area And Manhattan Locations

Sephora has announced the adoption of Apple Pay for all Bay Area stores, starting today. It will also be in the Lexington store in Manhattan.

Over 70 percent of Sephora’s in-store customers are also iPhone owners, according to internal company research. But Sephora had to hold off on being part of the first major retail outlets announced when Apple Pay first launched because it didn’t have the NFC enabled pin pass at the time. It has since “doubled down” on technology that would allow it to use Apple Pay. Sephora says this required an entire software overhaul to get the mobile payment technology ready in time for the holiday shopping season.

“We’ve actually looked for a mobile payments solution for a long time but of course it needs to be something that is already widely adopted and Apple Pay provides that,” explains Sephora’s CMO Julie Bornstein.

Sephora was one of the first retailers to adopt Apple’s Passbook for customer loyalty cards.

Apple Pay  joins other digital offerings from the makeup retail giant like Color IQ, a system that aims to personalizes foundation to individual Sephora shoppers, and the Sephora to Go app.

Sephora to Go integrated Apple Pay into its payment options over two weeks ago. Now Sephora will be able to process mobile payments within physical locations as well.

Other retailers such as Walgreens have said mobile wallet payments have doubled with Apple Pay. Whole Foods reported over 150,000 Apple Pay transactions since launching.

Sephora plans to test the market in the two major tech metropolises, but says it will roll out Apple Pay in stores nationwide in the very near future.