Attention Walmart shoppers—proceed to checkout to use your Walmart Pay. The Bentonville behemoth continues the rollout of its own mobile payment service, this time with a major launch at its 100 stores across NY State. According to the following, Walmart Pay is more than just about payments.
Walmart has launched its mobile payment service, Walmart Pay, in New York. The launch comes less than two months after the big nationwide rollout began, kicking off in Texas and Arkansas, and the service has been gradually introduced to other markets in the intervening weeks.
The service sees Walmart take on the likes of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay, and the payment feature embedded within the main Walmart app on Android and iOS integrates with most of the major bank cards and Walmart gift cards. Walmart Pay works at any checkout — open the app, hit Walmart Pay, then scan the QR code on the register’s screen using the phone’s camera to connect.
With 140 million foot customers each week, Walmart is one of the biggest retailers in the U.S., so Walmart Pay is a notable launch — particularly as it doesn’t yet accept Apple, Google, or Samsung’s respective payment methods.
But the company has maintained that the launch is less about competing with these other tech giants in the payments space than it is about making it easier to buy things in physical retail stores — so this could be seen as more of an attack on the likes of Amazon than anything else.
“It was really a design around improving checkout, not just payment,” explained Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services at Walmart, in an interview with Fortune earlier this year. “When we looked at checkout, there was still friction in the process.”
First of all, Walmart is smart to implement their mobile pay system sequentially on a market-by-market basis, not all at once. Some other retailers have learned the hard way when attempting major payment systems changes nationwide at the flip of a switch. Also, we are starting to see how contactless payments at checkout are so more streamlined than the current EMV fumbling and bumbling that is taking place. By-the-way, note Starbucks’ nearly 25% mobile pay checkout rate. Mobile pay is fast, seamless, and easily integrated with a store’s loyalty and marketing programs. No surprise as well that Walmart can head off at the pass chief mobile rivals, Apple, Android, and Samsung. Watch for other retailers to step up to in-house mobile pay systems and control more of their own destiny
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Associate Director, Research Services at Mercator Advisory Group
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