Walmart's Entry Into The Mobile Payments Arena

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

Walmart just threw its hat in the mobile payments ring in a big way. Walmart launched the rollout of Walmart Pay, a free smartphone-based payment solution that will work with all credit cards, debit cards, and Walmart gift cards at U.S. stores. A loyalty feature overall, Walmart Pay is the retail giant’s newest effort to streamline the shopping experience. Walmart states that Walmart Pay is the company’s latest bid to reduce the friction that can come from shopping in stores and better serve mobile customers, who are increasingly making up a larger portion of retailers’ customer bases. Walmart does not accept Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, but mobile wallet Walmart Pay will run on both iOS and Android devices and should be available nationwide by the middle of 2016.

The launch of Walmart Pay leaves the fate of CurrentC in question. Will CurrentC come to fruition now that Walmart has its own proprietary mobile payment solution? Time will tell, but it doesn’t look good. And given that Apple Pay has not been yet widely adopted by consumers, will single-merchant offering, Walmart Pay, be different? Will Walmart customers adopt and use the app on a regular, recurring basis in a way that other mobile payments do not yet see? It’s been written that the availability of more merchants that support NFC-based payment and the increase in U.S. consumers with iPhone 6 and 6s models will likely lead to continued adoption in 2016. According to comScore, more than 22 million people use Walmart's mobile app each month. Neil Asche, president and CEO of global e-commerce at Walmart stated that more than half of the online orders placed with Walmart from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday were conducted on mobile devices, representing a larger penetration than the overall industry. Walmart Pay stands to do well in the mobile payment space, as it allows customers to split their payment between multiple payment types and add their Savings Catcher balances as a payment type. Savings Catcher is a Walmart app service that allows customers to upload pictures of their receipts and then scans those receipts to see if competitors offered lower prices on any items. Such savings are loaded onto an e-gift card.

Forrester predicts mobile payments to account for $142 billion in sales by 2019. If Walmart Pay can follow in Starbucks’ footsteps, the retail giant will make a big dent in that prediction.