Apparently, hell has frozen over. Walmart on Friday said it will finally accept payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay at its stores, including Walmart and Sam’s Club.
The retail giant says that beginning August 24, it will begin adding Tap to Pay to its payment options at select Walmart stores and Sam’s Club locations. It expects the feature to reach all stores and clubs by the end of the year, and will then roll it out to all its fuel stations by the middle of 2027.
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.
The company is trying to spin the news as giving consumers more choice.
“Tap to Pay is a great addition to the other payment options already offered like cash, credit card or Walmart Pay…,” the company’s announcement stated. “And giving customers and members more choice at checkout is part of a broader effort to make managing and using their money easier.”
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