Wal-Mart to offer Smartphone payments in stores

           Wal-Mart to offer Smartphone payments in stores

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is planning to offer its own way for shoppers to pay with their smartphones in its stores, setting itself up as a competitor to Apple Inc. and other companies that already have rolled out mobile-payment technologies.

The retail behemoth is adding a feature to its existing mobile app so consumers can pay at the register with any payment information stored in their Walmart.com account, including gift cards, debit cards or credit cards. The retailer plans to release the payment capability to its 4,600 U.S. stores in the first half of next year, company executives said on Wednesday.

By getting into mobile-payment technology, Wal-Mart will go up against Internet and technology giants like Apple, Samsung Electronics Co. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google which have rolled out their own products to facilitate a shift away from cash and credit cards. It isn’t the first retailer to try its hand in this area. Starbucks Corp. created a payment app build around its loyalty program that allows coffee buyers to pay with their phones in stores while earning points toward free coffee.

But like many large retailers, Wal-Mart has been slow to adopt technology that allows shoppers to pay with phones in stores, in part because not many consumers are rushing to move away from credit and debit cards. Wal-Mart never enabled the register NFC technology needed to use Apple Pay and similar systems for payment.

Daniel Eckert, Wal-Mart’s head of services for the U.S., said the retailer decided to build its own payment system because the other options either only work on particular smartphones or only allow users to pay with a select group of credit or debit cards.

Wal-Mart wanted to create something “that allows customers to use any credit, debit, prepaid card, just as they would normally do if it were plastic,” said Mr. Eckert. About 75% of Wal-Mart shoppers own a smartphone, he said.

With the new system called Walmart Pay, shoppers use Wal-Mart’s app and camera feature to scan a QR code at the register which then connects to the payment cards on file in their Walmart.com accounts. App users also can pay for part of their purchase with cash when using the mobile system.

Wal-Mart’s offering marks a definitive move away from the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, a band of retailers and restaurants that joined together in 2012 to build a mobile payment technology called CurrentC that would help them sidestep the billions of dollars spent on credit-card payments each year. MCX started testing CurrentC in some Columbus, Ohio, retail locations including Target Corp. earlier this year.

Mr. Eckert said the retailer remains committed to MCX and the CurrentC app, and said in the future, Wal-Mart’s app could integrate other mobile payment systems like CurrentC and Apple Pay as a form of payment as it does now with credit cards.

Other retailers have made moves to accept pre-existing mobile-payment options. In August, Rite Aid Corp. started accepting Apple Pay and Google’s Android Pay. Earlier this year Best Buy Co. also started accepting Apple Pay in stores. Target continues “to explore additional mobile wallet solutions,” in addition to its CurrentC test, a spokesman for Target said.