Walmart today announced its own mobile payments service. “Walmart Pay” will be built into the retailer’s app on iOS and Android devices. The “we don’t need Apple Pay, nope, no sir!” service will roll out to select U.S. Walmart stores this month, and will go nationwide in the first half of 2016.
Checkout using Walmart Pay happens in three easy steps:
- Open: Visit any register, open the Walmart app and choose Walmart Pay. Activate the camera.
- Scan: At any time during checkout, simply scan the code displayed at the register. Walmart Pay is now connected.
- Done: Associate scans and bags the items… and it’s done. An eReceipt will be sent to the app and can be viewed at any time.
WHEW! Yeah, that seems SO much simpler than Apple Pay! (Where’s the </SARCASM> key on this thing?) The new payments “solution” will be available only at Walmart stores, and will support any major credit, debit, pre-paid, or Walmart gift card.
Walmart says 22 million customers use its Walmart mobile app each month. So at least 11 to 37 of them should be able to figure the app out and use it.
Walmart is just one of around a dozen retailers who don’t accept Apple Pay, and say they have no plans to do so. (We’ll check back with them around this time next year.) The members of the group instead have thrown their weight behind the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium and its yet-to-see-the-light-of-day payments service CurrentC.
It isn’t known how Walmart’s new payments service might affect their CurrentC plans. However, Walmart senior vice president of services Daniel Eckert say Walmart Pay allows “for integration of other mobile wallets in the future.”
“The simplicity and ease of Walmart Pay comes not only from how it works, but also in how it’s been built,” said Daniel Eckert, senior vice president, services, Walmart U.S. “We made a strategic decision to design Walmart Pay to work with almost any smartphone and accept almost any payment type – even allowing for the integration of other mobile wallets in the future. The result is an innovation that will make the ease of mobile payments a reality for millions of Americans.”
And it keeps more money in Walmart’s pocket, which is what all of this is really about.
The Walmart App is available free in the App Store for the iPhone and Apple Watch. [GET IT HERE]
(Via MacRumors)
