Users can pay with any iOS or Android Smartphone and major payment type, at any checkout lane.
Walmart announced the launch of its mobile payment solution, Walmart Pay, last year, as an effort to streamline the customer shopping experience. The QR code mobile payment system serves to directly challenge Apple, Alphabet, and Samsung in the payments marketplace. The program integrates the ability to pay via major credit card, debit card, or preloaded Walmart gift card directly into the Walmart mobile app.
“The Walmart app was built to make shopping faster and easier,” Neil Ashe, president and CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce explained. “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.”
Now, Walmart has announced the expansion of its Walmart Pay mobile wallet application to 15 new states, including Virginia, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, the Carolinas, and the Dakotas, CNET reported.
Walmart Pay links to the customer's credit, debit or Walmart gift card: To pay, shoppers scan a unique QR code that pops up at the payment terminal with their smartphone camera. The app can only be used at Walmart stores.
More than 20 million Wal-Mart customers use the app monthly, according to the retailer's press release. Walmart is the only retailer that offers its own mobile payment service.
Walmart had previously announced that it expected to launch Walmart Pay capabilities nationwide before the second half of 2016, and the recent rapid expansion demonstrates their commitment to this goal.
Walmart was also one of the founding members of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), which developed CurrentC, a mobile payment app that has been piloted by Target as a way to fight back against credit cards fees for transactions. Development of CurrentC has been glacially slow, however, and the release of the Walmart Pay app suggests that the retail giant has abandoned its hope for CurrentC in favor of its own mobile payment app.
