Directly competing with Apple Pay, the new system has gone live in select Walmart stores in the United States, allowing shoppers to pay with any major credit or debit card, and even preloaded Walmart gift cards. Yes, the retail company is set to make your life easier with launch of ‘Walmart Pay, ‘ which will accept payments from Android as well as Apple devices. If they already have a Walmart.com account, the credit card information from there will be transferred into the app. At the checkout, customers will use their phone’s camera to scan a QR code displayed on the screen of the credit card reader.
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Wal-Mart is launching its own mobile payment system, Walmart Pay, which is aimed at creating a seamless shopping experience for its customers. Walmart Pay has the ability to integrate with other mobile wallets as a preferred payment type, Eckert says, though Walmart hasn’t struck up any specific partnerships at this time.
Walmart Pay will also let customers do things like split their payment between multiple payment types and add their Savings Catcher balances as a payment type.
Done: Associate scans and bags the items… and it’s done.
This on the face of it is a odd move, a one retailer payment solution which can’t be used anywhere else, but then Walmart do have an enormous customer base who could adopt the new service.
Twenty-two million customers use the Wal-Mart app each month, and more than half of Wal-Mart’s online orders are now coming from a mobile device.
Called Walmart Pay, it’s going up against the likes of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay, but instead of using a touch-to-pay NFC chip system, Walmart’s offering uses a QR code.
While Walmart Pay has been developed so that Apple Pay or a similar method could be integrated in the future, there is not yet a special plan to do so, Asche said.
Walmart is the latest big name to enter the still-developing mobile payments industry.
Neil Ashe, president and CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce said in the announcement, “The timing couldn’t be better to share this news, given what we saw over the holiday weekend”.
To use the feature, customers will need to install the Walmart Pay app, and select to pay with it at the checkout counter.
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Since Apple Pay’s launch, Wal-Mart had resisted the urge to give in to the mobile payment platform. Additional locations will be added this year in Bentonville and Rogers with the goal of rolling out to 5,000-plus stores by mid-2016.
