Walmart finally says yes to Apple Pay and Google Pay - Neowin
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Walmart has announced that starting 24th August (next Monday), it will be adding Tap-to-pay payment options (like Apple Pay and Google Pay) to select Walmart and Sam's Club locations.
The company hopes that by mid-2027 it will have expanded Tap-to-pay to all its stores and clubs in the US. Tap-to-pay is the one payment option Walmart has stubbornly refused to support for the longest time. It is used by more than half of American consumers (around 125 million smartphone users and regular cardholders), representing over 60% of all in-store face-to-face purchase volume across the country.
When Apple Pay launched back in 2014, Walmart went to war against it, organizing a group of massive retailers (known as the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX) to build a rival mobile payment app called CurrentC. With CurrentC, instead of tapping your phone, you'd have to open an app and scan a QR code. Plus, the app was super clunky to use and was even breached by hackers in its early days.
With CurrentC proving to be a disaster, Walmart decided to go it alone and launched Walmart Pay. Like CurrentC, Walmart Pay was built entirely around QR codes (Walmart deliberately chose not to use NFC technology, which powers Apple and Google Pay). The payment option was built directly into the Walmart app, and you had to pre-link your major credit cards, debit cards, or Walmart gift cards directly to your Walmart.com account.
Walmart is the latest retailer to cave to consumer demands after years of pushing proprietary options. Several of its peers in the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), caved a long time ago. For example, Target tried to replace CurrentC with its own barcode-based payment system called Target Wallet, launched in December 2017, that allowed shoppers to scan a barcode at the register to apply discounts (Cartwheel) and pay using their proprietary Target RedCard (now Circle Card). Less than two years later, the company gave up the fight and rolled out support for Apple Pay, Google Pay, and contactless cards to all of its 1,800+ stores.
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