While Home Depot never formally announced Apple Pay compatibility, customers have been able to use it in several of the company's locations for some time now. However, it seems that Home Depot is now officially blocking Apple Pay at most of its retail outlets, pointing customers towards PayPal instead.
When asked about this lack of support, Home Depot sent this response, which was posted on Reddit:
We currently do not accept Apple Pay in our local stores or online. We do have the option of using PayPal, in store and online. We may offer this feature in the future, but we currently do not have a time frame for this and if we are going to accept Apple Pay.
It's unknown at this time if Home Depot has cut off other contactless payment services, but it seems likely. It appears, however, that some locations may still have Apple Pay enabled, as some people have reported that they are still able to make use of the service. Update: Home Depot says that their NFC terminals are down while they upgrade their system, according to Cult of Mac.
Given the massive data breach that the company experienced last year, which left 56 million customer credit cards exposed, you'd think that Home Depot would put customer security over a deal with PayPal. Apple Pay, which uses tokenization to keep your credit card safe, would offer greater security over traditional cards, and give users who don't want to use PayPal another way to pay.
Source: Matthew Crawford (Twitter), Reddit, Cult of Mac
