Walmart To Finally Start Accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay

Walmart To Finally Start Accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay (techcrunch.com) 23 After years of refusing to adopt tap-to-pay technology in its stores, retail giant Walmart announced today that it is finally accepting payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay. The rollout begins August 24 at select Walmart and Sam's Club locations and is expected to reach all stores by year-end. It will then expand to fuel stations by mid-2027. TechCrunch reports: The news is a surprise, as Walmart has long refused to adopt the ubiquitous payment technology to instead promote its own in-house solutions, like Walmart Pay and Scan-and-Go. In years past, Walmart even teamed up with other big retailers in an attempt to take down Apple Pay entirely with an alternative mobile payment system of their own, called CurrentC. The effort failed and was shut down back in 2016. All the while, Walmart customers have begged the company to support modern tap-and-pay technology, like Apple Pay, which is now accepted at 85% of retailers across the U.S., including most larger stores. For Walmart, the decision reads as a defeat. As one of the world's largest retailers, it believed it could push customers to its own payment solutions despite the growing adoption of Apple Pay and others of its kind. Ultimately, it had to admit that it was disadvantaging its own customers in the process. All the while, Walmart customers have begged the company to support modern tap-and-pay technology, like Apple Pay, which is now accepted at 85% of retailers across the U.S., including most larger stores. For Walmart, the decision reads as a defeat. As one of the world's largest retailers, it believed it could push customers to its own payment solutions despite the growing adoption of Apple Pay and others of its kind. Ultimately, it had to admit that it was disadvantaging its own customers in the process. Better late than never (Score:4, Interesting) Can't you already pay with the app? (Score:3) I'm not a WalMart hater. I want to see them thrive and counter-balance Amazon...and they really have the potential to do so. I know a handful of engineers there and they tell me they take their online technology seriously and want to claw-back marketshare from Amazon. However, each time I go to their store or website, I am sorely disappointed. EVERY Target in my area is clean, the staff are great, the experience is nice. WalMart is the polar opposite. Re: (Score:2) >"They SUCK in my area...mediocre prices and every store is a horror show of damaged shitty merchandise thrown all over the place, flicking lights, and poorly maintained everything." My nearest Walmart, which I frequent, has on-part or lower prices on most goods than anywhere else, and it really not dirty or overly disorganized. And no problems with lighting. My problems are: 1) They are *ALWAYS* out of SOMETHING I need. Often it is several items on my list. And often it is something basic like eggs, d Re: (Score:2) Uhm my drivers license is also on my phone. Re: (Score:2) Yes, you can use their app to pay. It sucks though. For one, my watch can tap to pay, but not with walmart app. For walmart, I have to open the app, wait for it to load, sometimes it randomly decides I need to "prove I'm a human", then as I'm trying to go to pay, it pops up a "you want walmart+ now!" and the "yes" button is close to where I would have tapped so I can imagine they get accidental accepts. Then finally I click and it opens the camera app to scan the qr code, which is an annoying approach in ge Re: (Score:2) American issue, not Walmart specific (Score:2) I believe apple pay has been available in Walmart Canadian stores for a long time. Tap to pay is pretty much everywhere. Re: (Score:3) Tap-to-pay (aka Interac Flash) has been available in Canadian Wal-Mart stores for over a decade. Whether that's done via a debit/credit card, Google Wallet, Samsung Wallet, or Apple Wallet is irrelevant as they all use the same tech. Once again, the backwater known as the US banking industry is decades behind the rest of the world. Re: (Score:3) Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) lets not forget (Score:2, Insightful) Re: (Score:2) No one cares about security in America. The banking system there dates back to the 80s. I swipe my card and see people actively confused when it asks for a PIN code and then they stand there awkwardly with a pen in hand when a receipt comes out with no where to sign. Just a reminder: India has a more modern banking system. Its one of the things Americans presumably would feel shame over if they ever looked outside their borders to the rest of the world. They were never going to win this one (Score:3) You could use ApplePay everywhere but Walmart, or you could use "WalmartPay" at walmart and only walmart. There was zero incentive to set that up when you could just dig out the physical card if you happened to find yourself in a walmart. Re: (Score:2) Your bank is most likely running decades old proprietary code from the most proprietary company of all, IBM. Not a FOSS answer but ... (Score:2) ... if you're just trying to reduce or eliminate the Mountain View Monster from your life then Samsung Pay is the non Apple/Google solution I'm aware of in the USA. But I've yet to see a Samsung phone stripped of all Google tech. Certainly not FOSS. I don't think there's a FOSS "NFC Wallet" app there yet. Re: (Score:2) I've never seen a NFC payment app on F-Droid. There's no such thing as a NFC payment app. There's a bank payment app, Apple is acting like a bank. Google is acting like a bank. No one here is storing credit cards on their phone so you won't ever see an "open source NFC payment app". Obviously I'm not going to trust my banking information to any proprietary software. The proprietary software is literally that of your bank's. If you don't trust their software I suggest you empty your bank account and stuff cash in pillowcases. Is there a way to tap to pay with an Android phone that doesn't have any Google apps on it? Yes. If your bank supports it. It used to be that my bank's own app ran the NFC payment. These days they outsource Oh fuck no (Score:2) And somehow I doubt the cheapskates running Walmart are going to pay to overhaul their entire system. So they're going to use a bunch of really old hardware that is really flaky. And I get to Don't confuse "tap to pay" (Score:4, Insightful) >"After years of refusing to adopt tap-to-pay technology in its stores, retail giant Walmart announced today that it is finally accepting payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay. " The definition of "tap to pay" is not Google Pay and Apple Pay (or Samsung Pay or whatever). It is touching the reader with ANY device, including a physical credit card, and have it contactlessly and quickly completing the transaction. All the Walmarts around here don't allow you to "tap to pay" with anything; INCLUDING real physical credit cards. You have to insert the card and stand there, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. And in my case, 25% of the time, it fails and I have to try again. Every other merchant I can think of uses tap to pay with cards, except Walmart. And I don't believe that ability would cost more than inserting the same exact card into a reader. https://www.savingadvice.com/a... [savingadvice.com] The consensus seems to be that Walmart just wants to make using credit cards as inconvenient as realistically possible, in the hopes customers will just use their app or whatever. Contactless credit card payments (Score:5, Interesting) Does this mean they will finally enable contactless credit cards on their POS terminals? They've refused to do it for years, requiring people to insert the chip into the reader, as an attempt to push people into using the Walmart app for payments. Drives me fucking insane. Half the terminals have screwed up chip contacts in them requiring gymnastics to get it to read the chip and it's so much slower than contactless processing. I've started intentionally failing the chip read twice so I can just swipe my card instead. Pretty sure it costs Walmart extra processing fees and is actually faster. Might return to shopping at Walmart (Score:2) We have a Walmart just 1.2 miles from our house. It is adjacent to the large local liquor store we frequent. Used to shop at Walmart for certain items that are much cheaper than Safeway. Stopped going to Walmart about a year ago as the "we don't tale ApplePay" became just too annoying. While I can save about $10 on a typical visit at Walmart vs Safeway, I was too frustrated.