Apple Pay Holdout Walmart Expands 'Walmart Pay' to 16 More States

[Robert.Walter]

Come on now - give credit where it's due - samsung pay nailed it right with their MST. Accepted at more than 90% of the places and just as secure. Free promotional gift cards so much incentive to use - and best of all you will be able to actually use it at places where android/apple pay doesn't even exist.

I agree, the MST system was a brilliant way to upshow Apple and it's a great transitional technology; it fills a niche by serving a real and present need.

As long as the Samsung device on which Samsung pay is running is able to run the latest android updates, then it is a feature that offers great benefits to its users.

I'm not sure if all Samsung pay devices are able to do this (Im not trying to sow FUD, I really don't know), but if the device is not on the latest release, I'd be a little cautious about using it. (Only about 10-15% of extant android devices are up to date). See:
http://arstechnica.com/security/201...und-in-google-play-root-90-of-android-phones/

Does anybody know if Samsung pay equipped devices and the problematic android process are mutually exclusive?

 

[deany]

My local Tesco on The Wirral accepts AP.

Good news,
Hopefully Tesco Heswall & Mold will be getting 'contactless' soon.

 

[dontwalkhand]

And this is why the good ol' USA is so behind on these financial payment systems. This is why NFC payment systems are so slow to catch on and will be the same for at least the next 5+ years. And this is why android pay never caught on since originally google wallet and ISIS (softcard) was functional back in 2013 but never took off because you could use it at jamba juice the most and not accepted anywhere else.

I'm so glad for loop pay being bought by samsung because 99% of the places (even at gas stations with the push and pull out card readers) work with samsung pay - though you need to trick those terminals first to activate the sensor. I do not see apple pay or android pay working in the next 5 years - at least not at places where most people shop. I don't mean panaera bread and the like.

A lot of mom and pop stores have NFC enabled terminals. I mean a lot. At least 95% of them that I go to. And I live in Arizona.

 

[Robert.Walter]

And this is why the good ol' USA is so behind on these financial payment systems. This is why NFC payment systems are so slow to catch on and will be the same for at least the next 5+ years. And this is why android pay never caught on since originally google wallet and ISIS (softcard) was functional back in 2013 but never took off because you could use it at jamba juice the most and not accepted anywhere else.

I'm so glad for loop pay being bought by samsung because 99% of the places (even at gas stations with the push and pull out card readers) work with samsung pay - though you need to trick those terminals first to activate the sensor. I do not see apple pay or android pay working in the next 5 years - at least not at places where most people shop. I don't mean panaera bread and the like.

Multiply your implementation estimate by 1/5 (or 2/5) and your estimate will be more accurate.

Momentum on the chip card roll out is still building, and the payment networks are now taking steps to speed up the merchant NFC POS certification process.

MST is useful at the moment but will become less so as proper NFC becomes ubiquitous (except for the few merchants that block it.)

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

They'll hold out, then when they finally succumb, it'll be the bouncing happy face saying that they're reducing prices and taking Apple Pay! There was no controversy! Buy the Watch and you can use your Apple Pay to pay for it for 249.97!

 

[MacAddict1978]

I've been to a Walmart, you wouldn't want to be flashing an expensive phone around there anyway.

Ha! Well, they don't have a lightning connector charging port in the store, but they have charging ports for these...

She's got the app....

She has no where to put a phone.... or at least good god, I hope she doesn't ahve a phone stashed anywhere...
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1660.jpg

 

[Glideslope]

In a protective case, not being waved around by the tills. I wouldn't go in there alone and I am trained to kill.

So your the Orkin Man, eh?

 

[aristobrat]

Target should be ashamed. They've already suffered a breach that compromised cards for many customers. An appropriate response to that should have been to run in the direction of Apple Pay as fast as they could.

Target (after the hack) was one of the the first major retailers to implement end-to-end encryption in their stores. That protects every customer card transaction - swiped the old way, chip inserted the new way, what have you. I think they ran the right way.

I wonder why they're bothering creating an entire app.

The app isn't new. IIRC, a previous press release said something like 20M people use the app monthly. This is just a new feature added to that app.

All retailers, by regulation, will have to support chip reader card scanners by the end of this year (which also means NFC capable).

There's no such regulation.

There was a liability shift last October, where merchants that couldn't take chip cards became responsible for any fraudulent transactions that could have been prevented if there were taking chip cards, but that's it.

For some merchants, that fraud risk is cheaper than implementing EMV at the moment.

NFC isn't tied to EMV.

 

[aces99]

I don't know if canada still does this but when I visit Vancouver/Richmond to hit up some Dim Sum joints - they bring the little card swiping terminal to you at your table when you are ready to pay. Same goes for Hong Kong and Taiwan where I last visited 2 years ago.

In the US they take your card from you and go in the back. That's where the shady business can happen.

Yes here in Canada pretty much every restaurant brings the credit card reader right to your tablet.

 

[Lershac]

I suspect the holdout has something to do with the transactional cost of Apple Pay. In Canada, Walmart refuses VISA because of the higher rates compared to MasterCard, which Walmart will begin accepting exclusively.

SAMs club locally finally caved on the Amex. Thank goodness. My world runs on Amex.

 

[NetMage]

Target (after the hack) was one of the the first major retailers to implement end-to-end encryption in their stores. That protects every customer card transaction - swiped the old way, chip inserted the new way, what have you. I think they ran the right way.

Except that would do no good against the hack that was used - the magstripe data is unencrypted and the terminal was compromised to send the data outside the Target network, so it wouldnt matter what was encrypted after that.

 

[Mac 128]

SAMs club locally finally caved on the Amex. Thank goodness. My world runs on Amex.

And Costco kicked it to the curb. Wal-Mart saves Amex butt.

 

[newyorkone]

Love Apple Pay, and the cashiers seem to love it too. Walmart is clearly ignoring the writing on the wall with what happened with CurrentC. Stubbornly doubling down...

 

[aristobrat]

Except that would do no good against the hack that was used - the magstripe data is unencrypted and the terminal was compromised to send the data outside the Target network, so it wouldnt matter what was encrypted after that.

In the Target and Home Depot hacks, the PIN pad terminal (which wasn't compromised) sent the card data in clear text to the register (which was running Windows, and was compromised), where malware scraped the data out of RAM.

With end-to-end encryption, the PIN pad terminal encrypts the card data (as soon as it's swiped/dipped), transmits that encrypted data to the register, who then forwards it out of the store, where at some point before it's authorized, it gets decrypted. Each PIN pad terminal has a unique encryption key, so even if one somehow gets compromised, it can't be used to decrypt data from another PIN pad terminal.

Moves the hacking bulls-eye from the lanes in the stores of the retailers and up to whoevers hosting their payment gateways (or are their processors), IMO.

 

[rdlink]

I know thats not what you said, I was just asking a question.

You were asking a question that's a non-sequitur, and completely unrelated to my original statement. My statement was that I don't want merchants gathering my shopping habits data, and that is one of the reasons I like Apple Pay. Nowhere in my statement was it implied that I wouldn't shop somewhere because they don't have Apple Pay.

 

[Michael CM1]

Someone got ahold of my debit card number and made a few purchases, including one at Walmart. This is after a previous incident where someone bought a Walmart gift card with my PayPal account.

Walmart, your purchase security is crap. I don't understand why this whole country doesn't demand an end to non-chip cards by 2020. The longer merchants wait to use more secure transaction methods like Apple Pay the longer we consumers have to deal with this crap. And no, scanning a barcode is not OK for something rolled out in 2016 by the largest retailer on the planet.
[doublepost=1466748683][/doublepost]

I definitely prefer ApplePay, but 2 things going for Walmart Pay:
- electronic receipts instead of paper...tree-huggers will love that.
- receipts automatically submitted to Walmart Savings Catcher (where available)...might as well scan the QR on the terminal if you'd have to scan the QR on the paper receipt later anyway, so a time-saver overall.

Digital receipts is something Apple and Google need to get on. Create something like a receipts app that will store receipts from Apple Pay, purchases made through scanned barcodes like Starbucks, online purchases, etc. Some places email them to me, which is fine but way less than ideal. I'd rather have some app working as a database to store this stuff so I can stop getting five dead trees when I buy a pack of gum.

 

[Stampyhead]

UK's biggest supermarket Tesco is still to roll out 'apple pay' outside London, very strange, I go to Lidl now who do accept 'apple pay'.

Their small Tesco Express stores accept Apple Pay outside London, at least some of them do. Mine here in West Sussex just got it a few months ago.

 

[iapplelove]

Walmart is like 3 times the size of the company that Apple is, with twice the revenue. I'm sure they will survive without applepay lol,cvs too.

 

[Waxhead138]

If the above (in bold) was true, they would have replaced their Cashiers and Customer Service Personnel a long time ago.

Lol I get your point. Not always the pinnacles of genius running the registers. But...the self service checkouts aren't that much better either. Broken half the time and the volume is always turned up to deafening.

 

[Zaft]

You were asking a question that's a non-sequitur, and completely unrelated to my original statement. My statement was that I don't want merchants gathering my shopping habits data, and that is one of the reasons I like Apple Pay. Nowhere in my statement was it implied that I wouldn't shop somewhere because they don't have Apple Pay.

Fair enough.

 

[BruiserB]

Doesn't using this app actually cause Walmart to pay HIGHER fees to the credit card companies? If I swipe or dip my card in their terminals at the store they pay the "card present" rate to the card issuer. However, if I use this app, since my card is stored on their server, but has never been physically swiped, they will pay the "card not present" rate, which is higher. For a company that wanted to lower their fees, this makes little sense, unless it is really that valuable to them to get the customer info. If they took ApplePay at the register, they would just pay the lower "card present" rate. They wouldn't pay anything extra to Apple. The card issuer would give a portion of the "card present" fee to Apple. Couldn't Walmart just develop a loyalty program like Walgreens and still get the customer info as well as keep their fees lower by accepting ApplePay? Such a loyalty program would also still allow them to put your receipt electronically into your app, etc.

I'd really like to see Apple convince the card issuers that in-app ApplePay reduces fraud enough that they will only charge merchants the "card present" rates for transactions over the internet. Then merchants would adapt ApplePay like wildfire for online transactions. And I bet Walmart would add in-app ApplePay at least to this convoluted offering of theirs.

I'm actually willing to give their app a try. I don't shop at Walmart much, not because I'm an elitist like so many on here, but just because they're not all that convenient to me. I wish people would just stop with the "nobody who shops there has an iPhone" and "I'm not going to risk my life by going there" comments. Truth is plenty of people go to Walmart every day including people with money and nice phones. I just think their strategy for electronic payments is a bit silly. I do get that they want to support a broad range of phones, but that doesn't have to mean not taking NFC payments from people who's phones do have the technology. And it would actually save them money if they did take ApplePay and other NFC solutions.

 

[kdarling]

Doesn't using this app actually cause Walmart to pay HIGHER fees to the credit card companies? If I swipe or dip my card in their terminals at the store they pay the "card present" rate to the card issuer. However, if I use this app, since my card is stored on their server, but has never been physically swiped, they will pay the "card not present" rate, which is higher.

No one seems to know for sure, but I'm going to guess that Walmart gets "card present" rates. Besides their sheer bargaining power, here's why:

The term is really transitioning to mean "cardholder present" or not. And the cardholder is indeed at the place of purchase and can sign or show id if necessary.

Also, contactless in-person payments have always gotten "card present" rates, even though the "card" is only an account number held either in memory, or in some back end token server. Therefore an in-person QR code should qualify the same way.

Make sense?

I'd really like to see Apple convince the card issuers that in-app ApplePay reduces fraud enough that they will only charge merchants the "card present" rates for transactions over the internet. Then merchants would adapt ApplePay like wildfire for online transactions. And I bet Walmart would add in-app ApplePay at least to this convoluted offering of theirs.

That would be cool, but you made me realize something: Walmart Pay can already do secure transactions over a web page that displays the QR code!! And with their bargaining power, they'd probably be able to get "card present" rates for that.

Not to mention that Walmart Pay apps could be created to work on virtually any device. Apple Pay seems destined to work only on Apple devices.

 

[expectdelay]

This may be the dumbest thing I've seen in a while.

 

[briloronmacrumo]

Walmart and most retailers are very cost conscious, because their margins are small compared to some businesses, and that extends to any payment methods they support ( Visa, MC, Discover, etc. ). All of those methods charge for their services and Walmart undoubtedly believes ( and probably knows ) Walmart Pay will be much less expensive than paying Apple ( either now or at some future point in time ) for service. Wanting to control their own destiny and expenses seems reasonable to me. Whether or not it is a good long-term business decision is unknown.

 

[tmiw]

Walmart and most retailers are very cost conscious, because their margins are small compared to some businesses, and that extends to any payment methods they support ( Visa, MC, Discover, etc. ). All of those methods charge for their services and Walmart undoubtedly believes ( and probably knows ) Walmart Pay will be much less expensive than paying Apple ( either now or at some future point in time ) for service. Wanting to control their own destiny and expenses seems reasonable to me. Whether or not it is a good long-term business decision is unknown.

Except Walmart Pay doesn't seem to save them any money due to it still using credit cards. At least REDcard saves Target money by not having a Visa or MasterCard logo.