Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., announced Wednesday that it is testing a mobile payment system, titled “Walmart Pay”, that will allow shoppers to use their smartphone to pay for products inside their shopping cart at checkout.
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The superstore is rolling out Walmart Pay, the first payment system introduced by a USA retailer that can be used on both Apple and Android smartphones.
The basic features requires shoppers to first choose the Walmart pay within the retailer’s mobile app, then activate the camera. An electronic receipt will be sent to the customer via the app. But for now, Wal-Mart’s proprietary payment method will be the only way most customers can pay with their phones in its stores.
The service will be introduced this month in some select stores.
So far, Wal-Mart hasn’t accepted Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or Android Pay, but that could change at some point.
According to Neil Ashe, president and CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce, “The Walmart app was built to make shopping faster and easier”. The retailer claims that its application is already one of the top-three retail apps on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, and has 22 million MAUs (Monthly Active Users) overall.
With this app, Walmart will now be in competition with Apple pay, Google wallet, and Samsung pay at its own store.
Walmart is a supporter of MCX the Merchant Customer Exchange, which promotes a payment system that is retail supported known as CurrentC. No, you can’t use Walmart Pay at Starbucks. This is because the retailer has favored its own form of payment service called Walmart Pay, which they released today.
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. It essentially combines a checkout payment system with app functionality, which allows customers to also locate items in-store or pick up items they have reserved. “The result is an innovation that will make the ease of mobile payments a reality for millions of Americans”, he added.
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