Walmart Launches Walmart Pay

The world’s largest retailer announced Walmart Pay Dec. 10 as a fast and secure way for shoppers to make purchases in the company’s stores using any Android smartphone or Apple iPhone at any checkout lane using nearly any payment card.

A great thing to note with this new payment option is that Wal-Mart becomes the only retailer with its own payment solution designed for most iOS and Android mobile devices capable of downloading the app from Google and Apple app stores.

Walmart will introduce the feature in a limited number of stores this month and plans to complete a nationwide launch by the first half of 2016.

Since the launch of Apple Pay and LG pay, WalMart has unveiled a new mobile payment solution called Walmart Pay on Thursday. At the register, they open up the app and then they activate the camera function to scan a QR code on the reader.

In the meantime, Daniel Eckert, Walmart U.S.’ senior vice president of services, pointed out that Walmart Pay has the capacity to integrate with other mobile wallets.

Walmart says that 140 million customers head into it’s stores every week and around 22 million of these use its app every month, so it’s more than likely these customers will try out Walmart Pay as well.

In addition to “Walmart Pay”, the wholesale retailer is also in talks with mobile wallet developers to create a mobile wallet that can be integrated with “Walmart Pay” in the future, according to FOX Business.

Surprisingly, Walmart Pay greatly differs from the existing Apple/Samsung/Android Pay in that it doesn’t rely on the tap-to-pay NFC-based system of its rivals. Walmart is the first retailer to launch its own payment service. However, several other retailers have chosen to support payment methods like Apple Pay and Android Pay.

“We’re making it as simple to pay in the store as it is to pay online”, said Walmart’s CEO of global e-commerce Neil Ashe.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week at over 9,700 retail units under 69 different banners in 28 countries. However the app, which was being developed for over three years, seems to have failed to take off. It now has an average 1 star rating out of almost 3.5k reviews. An electronic receipt is then stored on the app. For added security, users can opt to used Apple Touch ID for fingerprint enabled safety.