Wal-Mart Pay is launching Thursday in a few stores in Bentonville, Ark., where the retailer is headquartered, and will be expanded to all 4,600 USA stores by summer, the company said.
Advertisement
Walmart customers can set their feature to prioritize the payments using for example only gift cards with say a credit card as a second payment choice. Wal-Mart’s mobile payment system, though, is created to integrate with other payment applications, including Apple Pay, if retailers decide to use both, according to the company. After the camera is activated, the user can at any point in the checkout scan the code that is displayed at the register to make a connection to Walmart Pay. In November, LG Electronics announced the development of its own payment service to take on similar services from competitors, including Apple Pay, Android Pay, Chase Pay and Samsung Pay. But, instead of accepting the existing ones, Walmart has chose to launch its own rival to them. There have been no plans on how Apple Pay will be integrated into the scene.
Wal-Mart global e-commerce CEO Neil Ashe, said that customers are accelerating the use of their smartphones to make purchases on Walmart.com and that Wal-Mart Pay will make that process more seamless.
The Walmart app is already used by 22 million customers and Walmart Pay will start rolling out to stores from next month. This festive season, Wal-Mart included new features like permitting online customers to check in once they got to the parking area so they could have their online requests prepared for pickup.
Interestingly, Walmart is a part of MCX (Merchant Customer Exchange), which backs another payments app called CurrentC, although this app only allows to pay via gift cards, a store’s private label card or through the checking account.
Walmart is one of the biggest supporters of the upcoming CurrentC payments platform, which has forced many retailers to opt out of Apple Pay until only recently. Walmart Pay is now connected. “It’s only available in a small percentage of retail stores nationwide”, said Kagan.
The number of tap-capable mobile payment machines in the United States is expected to surpass 1.5 million this year.
Advertisement
Wal-Mart has been pushing for a mobile payment system for years now.
