Walmart rolls out Walmart Pay across all US stores
Walmart said it has made the mobile payment app Walmart Pay available in more than 4,600 Walmart stores nationwide.
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Announced in December, Walmart Pay is pitched as a free mobile-payments service for use in the retail giant's stores. It allows payments on Apple and Android devices with almost all major credit cards, debit cards, pre-paid cards, and even Walmart gift cards.
The service is void of near-field communication (NFC) compatibility, so users must go inside Walmart's mobile app and activate Walmart Pay in order to initiate and complete a purchase.
Luckily for Walmart, the retailer already counts 24 million registered users for its mobile app, which probably has helped on the adoption-front. The retailer said Wednesday that transactions via Walmart Pay have increased 45 percent in just the last week.
Walmart's decision to launch Walmart Pay has been seen as a retaliation against the payment networks, as well as sign that Walmart's ties to CurrentC -- a mobile-payment system created by the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) with the backing of a consortium of major retailers including Walmart, Target, and Lowe's -- were all but gone.
The move also set Walmart on a similar path as Starbucks, which integrated a proprietary mobile-payment service into its own app with much success. Other retailers like Target have also decided to develop their own mobile-payment systems, but even then, mobile payments have yet to really take off. Forrester predicts that by 2019, mobile payments will account for just 1 percent of all payment transactions.
SEE ALSO: How Walmart's launch of Walmart Pay could change the mobile payments game | Home Depot sues Visa, MasterCard as PIN battle looms | Walmart Pay rolled out across 600 stores in Texas and Arkansas | Wal-Mart CEO: Our e-commerce growth is too slow | Like Walmart, Target thinks we need more mobile payment apps; they're both wrong