BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has introduced Walmart Pay, a secure way for customers to pay in Walmart stores with their smartphones through the Walmart mobile app.
With this launch, Walmart said it becomes the only retailer to offer its own payment solution that works with any iOS or Android device, at any checkout lane, and with any major credit, debit, prepaid or Walmart gift card.
It is introducing the mobile payment feature in select stores beginning this month, and it will launch the solution nationwide by the first half of next year.
“The Walmart app was built to make shopping faster and easier,” said Neil Ashe, president and CEO of Walmart global e-commerce. “Walmart Pay is the latest example--and a powerful addition--of how we are transforming the shopping experience by seamlessly connecting online, mobile and stores for the 140 million customers who shop with us weekly.”
As many as 22 million customers actively use the Walmart app each month, and it ranks among the top three retail apps in the Google and Apple app stores, said the company. The Walmart app enhances the shopping experience in Walmart stores with features including checking in to pick up an online order at a Walmart store, refilling pharmacy prescriptions and finding an item’s store location.
Customers visit any register, open the Walmart app, choose Walmart Pay and activate the camera. At any time during checkout, they scan the code displayed at the register. Walmart Pay is now connected. The associate scans and bags the items, and Walmart Pay sends an eReceipt to the app.
“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 of services for 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.”
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is a founding member of the Merchant Customer Exchange LLC (MCX) mobile wallet initiative.
MCX is building CurrentC, a customer-focused and security-driven mobile commerce solution that promises to deliver a seamless and convenient payment and shopping experience for customers and merchants. Along with Wal-Mart, Boston-based MCX’s owner-members include leaders in the big-box, convenience, pharmacy, fuel, grocery, quick- and full-service dining, specialty-retail and travel categories. Members include convenience-store retailers 76, 7-Eleven, Alon, Circle K, Conoco, ExxonMobil, GetGo, Kum & Go, My Goods Market, Phillips 66, QuikTrip, RaceTrac, Sheetz, Shell, Sunoco and Wawa.
How the introduction of Walmart Pay will affect MCX remains to be seen.
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