The system, which is now being tested at stores in Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart’s headquarters, will allow shoppers to pay with all major credit or debit cards through its app at the cash register.
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) launched its own mobile payment service “Walmart Pay” on Thursday, potentially dealing a sharp blow to the ambitions of CurrentC, a beta-stage mobile wallet the company had been co-developing with a consortium of retailers. You’ll then use your phone’s camera to scan the QR code that’s displayed on the register and you’ll be good to go.
As the Wall Street Journal notes, the company appears to have taken a step back from CurrentC by launching Walmart Pay, but Daniel Eckert, Walmart’s USA head of services, said Walmart still plans to work with the joint venture. Walmart Pay is being introduced immediately in select stores around the United States and will be expanded after the holidays, according to the company.
USA Today said that the feature is Walmart’s latest bid to reduce the friction that can come from shopping in stores and better serve mobile customers, who are increasingly making up a larger portion of retailers’ customer bases.
Furthermore, Walmart also intends to fork $2 billion out of its pocket to reinforce its e-commerce operations within the next two years.
Still, it’s interesting that Walmart has chosen to launch it’s own mobile payment system. Walmart says that 22 million customers actively use its Walmart app each month, placing it among the top three retail apps in the App Store and Google Play. Walmart has also never enabled the NFC readers needed for Apple Pay.
Since Apple Pay’s launch, Wal-Mart had resisted the urge to give in to the mobile payment platform.
The mobile payment feature “was built to make shopping faster and easier”, said Neil Ashe, head of Walmart Global eCommerce.
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The number of tap-capable mobile payment machines in the United States is expected to surpass 1.5 million this year. At the end of the transaction, the app generates an eReceipt. Presently, shoppers can now check in when they head over to a store to send a signal to staff that they are there to pick up the items they purchased online.
