Unlike Costco, Walmart Has 'No Plans' to Accept Apple Pay

[hypertoast]

Samsung Pay FTW.... Works flawlessly with my Note8 at almost all locations where there is a credit-card accepting terminal. Failed a couple of times, but, 9 out of 10 times, it was as easy as it could be.
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Same. I'm not begrudging anyone else who decides to shop there in their effort be economical with their own spending, however I despise Walmart, many of their previously mentioned business practices, and the awful shopping experience so, I'll always choose to shop elsewhere. They could adopt Apple Pay tomorrow and it wouldn't change my decision one bit.

Any one shop at Amazon and know the conditions of its workers at its warehouses? Are you boycotting Amazon too?

And yeah, Apple's factories in China, they are a slave labor camp... So, should we boycott Apple products entirely?

No way, Apple does everything correct, its the contractor (FoxxConn) who is at fault.

 

[Southern Dad]

Personally, I shop at Walmart, often. I wish that they would adopt Apple Pay. Every time that I check out, I am reminded of how much I wish that they would start taking it.

 

[yanki01]

is it really THAT serious?

 

[840quadra]

I continue to have zero plans to shop at Wal*Mart, or sams club so I am fine with that.

Not an apple only issue, I like android NFC payments just as much (if not more). Target is frustrating ( being a Minnesota company near me) as well with their refusal to accept either system.

Going shopping with just my watch and AirPods is becoming more normal for me, as I enjoy the freedom of quick shopping trips on my motorcycle.

 

[hypertoast]

They’ll be forced to support it someday... Just like CVS was. CVS Pay was garbage and so is Walmart Pay
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They’ve never supported Apple Pay, why would anyone stop shopping there... nothing has changed.
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With CVS giving in I can’t imagine Publix holding out too much longer - they were both part of the CurrentC disaster. I’ve been shopping at fresh market for awhile now specifically because Publix doesn’t take Apple Pay. I usually leave the house with just a watch these days.

Care to explain why CVSPay / Walmart Pay is garbage? Is it one of those things which is not supported by Apple Pay and so its garbage or you just feel that way?

 

[tech3475]

I also live in Scotland and use Pay every day with cards from 2 banks neither charge a monthly fee. As far as I know none of the UK banks charge a monthly fee for using Pay.

I know Natwest used to require one of their premium accounts, but that was years ago.

 

[Ebok]

Look out superior people that *don't shop at Walmart*!

That condescension looks good on you. Really.

How much longer until humans grow up and stop being offended over everything?

 

[Cloudane]

The stubbornness to adopt new payment methods stateside baffles me. Walmart-owned Asda in the UK got Apple Pay pretty much straight away, and almost every shop nowadays at the very least has generic (£30 max) contactless if they don't have Apple/Google/Samsung Pay. It was the same with chip and PIN, still using old mag stripes over there even now?! My Samsung phone even has a magnetic stripe emulator to work around the lack of adoption of modern payment methods. It's bizarre.

 

[tdar]

They’ll be forced to support it someday... Just like CVS was. CVS Pay was garbage and so is Walmart Pay

With CVS giving in I can’t imagine Publix holding out too much longer - they were both part of the CurrentC disaster. I’ve been shopping at fresh market for awhile now specifically because Publix doesn’t take Apple Pay. I usually leave the house with just a watch these days.

You should be clear why CVS pay and Walmart Pay (and in fact all of the in house pays) are as you say crap. A inefficient method (for the customer) to pay coupled with the risk of data hacking and theft plus the certainty that your purchase and demographic data is being sold. None of witch apply to Apple Pay.

I would not be so optimistic about Publix. They are a big data collector and seller. One of the first in fact. I expect that given their almost monopoly status in Florida+their domination in Atlanta, that they are making lots of $$ there. Not likely to give that up. Plus in many ways, very slow on tech adaption. Look how long it took them to add chip card support. WAY after the deadline. They already have the equipment in place to support Apple Pay, so there is really no impediment other than I just do not think they have any desire. I contacted corporate in Lakeland,If you would like to see Apple Pay there I would suggest you do the same.
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The stubbornness to adopt new payment methods stateside baffles me. Walmart-owned Asda in the UK got Apple Pay pretty much straight away, and almost every shop nowadays at the very least has generic (£30 max) contactless if they don't have Apple/Google/Samsung Pay. It was the same with chip and PIN, still using old mag stripes over there even now?! My Samsung phone even has a magnetic stripe emulator to work around the lack of adoption of modern payment methods. It's bizarre.

The stubbornness is that in the US we do not have any law or procedures that prevent our sellers from retaining our data and selling and mining it for their profit. Here in the US, for our "Big Box" stores, this has become a very large pile of money. They do not want to give it up for no gain from their prospective. Some day the banks will demand it for fraud prevention and we might see some change in the law one day. But for now it all fair game. Unless customers say no.

 

[Cloudane]

The stubbornness is that in the US we do not have any law or procedures that prevent our sellers from retaining our data and selling and mining it for their profit. Here in the US, for our "Big Box" stores, this has become a very large pile of money. They do not want to give it up for no gain from their prospective. Some days the banks will demand it for fraud prevention and we might see some change in the law one day. But for now it all fair game. Unless customers say no.

Ah I see, and this is harder to do with contactless payments due to tokenisation.

They get around that to a large degree here by using loyalty cards in exchange for a small discount (less than they gain from knowing more about you of course, but they're also not allowed to sell personal data to third parties unless you very consciously and explicitly opt in and even then it's restricted afaik). So you'd have an optional Tesco Clubcard with a barcode on it that you scan just before presenting payment and they track your purchases through that, and give 'points' that typically equate to a 1% discount. It works well here as the points building / rewards systems seem to resonate with the public, it's probably at least somewhat one of those "endorphin release" phenomena. And it's nice when all those pennies add up to a £5 voucher as it feels like free money, even though it's just basically like a glacially slow savings account!

 

[mrow]

Care to explain why CVSPay / Walmart Pay is garbage? Is it one of those things which is not supported by Apple Pay and so its garbage or you just feel that way?

They are much more cumbersome to use.

 

[bluespark]

They should allow both, but offer perks for people who want to use Walmart Pay. For example, I could use my watch to pay at Dunkin Donuts, but I prefer the discounted reload cards and perks that using the app gets me. But, I have a choice.
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Nearly all stores support chip and pin now, the exception is usually restaurants who still take your credit card to swipe in the back room.

Exactly this. Support everything and offer perks to customers who choose your preferred option. Everyone wins, and you probably end up with more customers.

 

[mrow]

The stubbornness to adopt new payment methods stateside baffles me. Walmart-owned Asda in the UK got Apple Pay pretty much straight away, and almost every shop nowadays at the very least has generic (£30 max) contactless if they don't have Apple/Google/Samsung Pay. It was the same with chip and PIN, still using old mag stripes over there even now?! My Samsung phone even has a magnetic stripe emulator to work around the lack of adoption of modern payment methods. It's bizarre.

The vast majority of places are chip and signature here now. The liability for fraud shifted from the card companies to the retailers a couple years ago so any remaining hold outs will switch once they get hit with enough fraud that they’re forced to cover they’ll switch. No major retailers don’t accept chip cards though. Most places if you try to swipe the terminal will give an error saying the chip needs to be inserted.

Also, a ton of places here accept Apple Pay. Many places just don’t even realize it. When the liability shift happened a few years ago they all upgraded their payment terminals to accept chip cards and those readers all have NFC in them. I’d say 9 times out of 10 times when I try to use it in places with a modern card terminal it works. I don’t know why Apple/Google/Samsung doesn’t do more outreach with these smaller businesses to make them aware they accept it and send them some marketing material for them to stick in their front door and register, etc. It’s in Apple’s best interest especially since Apple gets a small cut of each transaction, unlike Google or Samsung.

It’s mostly a few major retailers here that don’t accept it and have purposefully disabled NFC payments because they see it as losing the ability to gather any data about who is making the purchase. If they can’t John Smith bought diapers last week they lose the ability to now send him marketing about baby clothes and formula since the transaction is anonymized. It won’t last though. As you’ve seen on the news here the last couple months more and more large retail hold outs are caving. Customers are demanding it and they don’t want to risk losing those customers. As you’ve seen in this thread there are lots of people who have started to leave their wallet at home and just take their phone/watch and if these people go to a store that doesn’t accept it that person is going to just go to their competitor that does accept it.

 

[Cloudane]

Ah right sounds like progress is being made since that liability shift!

AFAIK, Apple Pay (as well as Google and Samsung) is nothing special per se, it just acts as a contactless credit card, which at least here we've had for a good few years now. So by the time Apple Pay came out, most places had already upgraded their terminals and could at least support the baseline contactless card policy which is fixed by the banks at a max £30 transaction. The difference when they "officially support" phone NFC payments is they somehow know it's an iPhone and usually (but not always) have a much higher transaction limit.
So yeah there's no reason it shouldn't work if a shop accepts contactless, even if they don't 'officially' advertise Apple Pay support.

We still get the lack of knowledge here sometimes. For example even though contactless has a lower transaction fee than chip-and-pin in order to try and do away with cash in the longer term and allow you to e.g. buy a 50p bottle of water by waving yoru card, a few shops still give you the line about "there's a minimum £5 spend on card sorry as we have to pay a transaction fee". It's generally accepted that the minimal (often waived) contactless fee is outweighed by the time and money saved handling cash, but a fair share of ignorance to this remains. At least it seems a concern for shops a lot more frequently than the data tracking thing.

 

[Baymowe335]

You, like many in America, have a naive view of economics. The labor market is not a fair and free market because employers have much more power than the workers. This is why in the past, workers were represented by unions. But employers and one political party conspired to pass laws that prevent that and launch a massive PR campaign against them. It's also not true that Wal-Mart is not "anti-anything". They are anti a lot of things. One of them is unions. So yes they pay much less than they otherwise would. Some see that as under paying.

I think you have that wrong...you're the one with the naive and frankly wrong view.

The market isn't 100% perfect, but to say every employee making the entry level wage at Walmart is underpaid is totally insane. Labor markets DO work like normal markets and the power the workers have is leaving and working at another company.

 

[Dj64Mk7]

You pay with your card. Either someone takes hold of your physical card and makes a copy of it, or someone has a hacked card reader that reads all the information off your card while accepting a payment. This could be a rogue employee, it could be a fraudulent company itself, or it could be hackers who replaced the terminals in the night.

Anyway, with that information someone can copy your card and use the copy to pay for things.

Does this happen often?

 

[macduke]

I don’t think WalMart cares about your business anyway. They are so large, they can afford to loss some die hard Apple fans.

I will continue go WalMart, Costco whatever. I don’t give a damn about if they accept Apple Pay or whatever.
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And what does that to WalMart? Nothing.

You shop at Costco? Costco will drove tons of small business to non existent, due to its pricing. So you want boycotting Costco as well?

Walmart is dying because they are unable to adapt to the current technology. Look no further than how they've conceded the vast majority of online sales to startups like Amazon. They are stuck in the past and many stores are horrible, dirty places to shop in. The latter is the main reason why I avoid them like the plague. Not to mention the special brand of obnoxious people who tend to frequent their establishment (no insult intended). Let's just say that people of Walmart is a real thing around these parts. Walmart is always a last resort.

 

[mrow]

Ah right sounds like progress is being made since that liability shift!

AFAIK, Apple Pay (as well as Google and Samsung) is nothing special per se, it just acts as a contactless credit card, which at least here we've had for a good few years now. So by the time Apple Pay came out, most places had already upgraded their terminals and could at least support the baseline contactless card policy which is fixed by the banks at a max £30 transaction. The difference when they "officially support" phone NFC payments is they somehow know it's an iPhone and usually (but not always) have a much higher transaction limit.
So yeah there's no reason it shouldn't work if a shop accepts contactless, even if they don't 'officially' advertise Apple Pay support.

We still get the lack of knowledge here sometimes. For example even though contactless has a lower transaction fee than chip-and-pin in order to try and do away with cash in the longer term and allow you to e.g. buy a 50p bottle of water by waving yoru card, a few shops still give you the line about "there's a minimum £5 spend on card sorry as we have to pay a transaction fee". It's generally accepted that the minimal (often waived) contactless fee is outweighed by the time and money saved handling cash, but a fair share of ignorance to this remains. At least it seems a concern for shops a lot more frequently than the data tracking thing.

You’re right, it does work just like a contactless credit card which is why if that works, any of the NFC based payments like Apple Pay and Google Pay will work. Banks here don’t set transaction amount limits though (at least none that I know of) thankfully

I think some businesses are starting to realize one, like you said it costs time and money to deal with cash, and two, competition in the credit card processing industry here has pretty much eliminated the flat fee, which was in addition to a percentage, that made a minimum purchase amount for credit cards necessary so you almost never see a minimum purchase amount here anymore. In fact, in NYC, where I live, a lot of places are starting to go credit card/contactless payment only. No cash accepted.

 

[kmann1983]

I'd even settle for a middle ground where Apple Pay could scan the QR code and send it to the app but, alas, Apple wants their cut I think so I doubt it.

Walmart is dying because they are unable to adapt to the current technology. Look no further than how they've conceded the vast majority of online sales to startups like Amazon. They are stuck in the past and many stores are horrible, dirty places to shop in. The latter is the main reason why I avoid them like the plague. Not to mention the special brand of obnoxious people who tend to frequent their establishment (no insult intended). Let's just say that people of Walmart is a real thing around these parts. Walmart is always a last resort.

WalMart dying would hurt a lot of people but, in the long run, be better for the economy I argue.

But I doubt WalMart is dying anytime soon. Or even in my life time.

I mean, jokingly, all they had to do is install a second story bar and have a PeopleOfWalMartLive.com while people are upstairs drunk and watching...

But seriously, WalMart isn't dying anytime soon. WalMart Pay is quite popular, which kind of pisses me off people are using it and Apple is refusing to assist in better forms of payment other than "their way or the high way".

 

[ersan191]

Care to explain why CVSPay / Walmart Pay is garbage? Is it one of those things which is not supported by Apple Pay and so its garbage or you just feel that way?

CVS pay worked about a third of the time when I tried to use it. Walmart Pay is QR code based instead of a modern concept like NFC and does not work on wearables. It also requires you to store your credit card information on Walmart’s servers which is one of the main problems NFC set out to fix in the first place. Both of them also require mobile data reception to function. They are literally inferior in every way possible to Google and Apple Pay

 

[Doomtomb]

who would buy anything at Wal-Mart anyway?!

 

[mrow]

I'd even settle for a middle ground where Apple Pay could scan the QR code and send it to the app but, alas, Apple wants their cut I think so I doubt it.



WalMart dying would hurt a lot of people but, in the long run, be better for the economy I argue.

But I doubt WalMart is dying anytime soon. Or even in my life time.

I mean, jokingly, all they had to do is install a second story bar and have a PeopleOfWalMartLive.com while people are upstairs drunk and watching...

But seriously, WalMart isn't dying anytime soon. WalMart Pay is quite popular, which kind of pisses me off people are using it and Apple is refusing to assist in better forms of payment other than "their way or the high way".

Apple isn’t refusing to assist in better forms of payment. Apple already has a superior method of payment. Walmart just doesn’t want to accept it. That’s on Walmart, not Apple. Opening apps, tapping buttons in the apps and taking pictures or QR codes? Forget it. It’s clunky, cumbersome and adds time to each transaction. Apple Pay is quicker than a chip card transaction. If Walmart wants the customer data (which is why they’re doing this, let’s be honest) that they’d lose out of since regular Apple Pay transactions are anonymized all they need to do is create a loyal program and get people to add it to their Apple Wallet. Apple Pay allows a loyalty card to be applied automatically during a transaction. Walmart gets all their customers data and the customer gets to use Apple Pay. Walgreens already does this.

 

[Solomani]

The Costco deal is already a big win for ApplePay.

I think that Walmart may eventually cave in, but that does depend if ApplePay continues to dominate the (US) contactless pay market. Right now, ApplePay completely trounces GooglePay and Samsung Pay. If the trajectory continues, maybe some executive at Walmart with half-a-brain will finally say "Hmmm maybe we are missing a huge revenue opportunity by avoiding ApplePay, hmmmm…."

 

[mrow]

The Costco deal is already a big win for ApplePay.

I think that Walmart may eventually cave in, but that does depend if ApplePay continues to dominate the (US) contactless pay market. Right now, ApplePay completely trounces GooglePay and Samsung Pay. If the trajectory continues, maybe some executive at Walmart with half-a-brain will finally say "Hmmm maybe we are missing a huge revenue opportunity by avoiding ApplePay, hmmmm…."

All they need to do is turn on NFC in their card payment terminals. They ones they have already support NFC. It doesn’t matter who is dominant in mobile payments or whatever. It’s literally just some guy in IT that needs to check a box to enable NFC and viola, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc are accepted. Walmart is just stubborn.

 

[iisdan]

Well i dont go there anyway because its obnoxiously huge but this is just 1 more reason not to