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. (NYSE:WMT) announced that it has introduced Walmart Pay, a fast, easy, and much secure system for customers to make payment through their smartphones at Walmart stores.
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In the meantime, Daniel Eckert, Walmart U.S.’ senior vice president of services, pointed out that Walmart Pay has the capacity to integrate with other mobile wallets.
For those of you that had been hoping for Walmart to start supporting Apple Pay, then there has been a bit of a setback.
Customers will register once to use the payment system after downloading Wal-Mart’s mobile app.
Technically Walmart Pay should work on any smartphone, but you need the Walmart app, which is only available on Android and iOS. He added that it has been “designed to allow for integration of other mobile wallets in the future as these capabilities mature in the market place”.
Walmart is a supporter of MCX the Merchant Customer Exchange, which promotes a payment system that is retail supported known as CurrentC. The code automatically associates the chosen payment method with the customer’s basket and completes the transaction.
“Walmart Pay is the latest example … of how we are transforming the shopping experience by seamlessly connecting online, mobile and stores”, Neil Ashe, CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce, said in a statement.
On Thursday, selected Wal-Mart stores in the US will witness Walmart Pay go live. An electronic receipt is then stored on the app. For added security, users can opt to used Apple Touch ID for fingerprint enabled safety. “The result is an innovation that will make the ease of mobile payments a reality for millions of Americans”.
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Roughly 140 million customers shop Walmart store each week and 22 million of them actively use the retailer’s app each month. It was essentially unknown until Apple Pay was introduced and retailers said their CurrentC contracts prohibited them from supporting Apple’s NFC-based mobile payment system. It appears that it centered its attention in beefing up its shopping app in time for the holiday season.
