Walmart finally lets customers make contactless payments

Walmart is finally rolling out tap-to-pay functionality across its US stores. For years, the retail giant restricted contactless payments to its own 'Walmart Pay' app to capture customer data and avoid high card processing fees. This shift signals a major win for consumer convenience and standardizes the checkout experience for millions of shoppers. For retailers, this move underscores the reality that consumer demand for speed and friction-free payments eventually outweighs the benefits of a closed-loop ecosystem. While the update primarily affects credit and debit cards, it has significant implications for financing. Modern point-of-sale (POS) financing and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) providers increasingly rely on virtual cards stored in mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. By enabling contactless terminals, Walmart is effectively opening the door for customers to use a wider range of third-party financing tools at the register without needing a physical card or the store's proprietary app. If you have been holding out on upgrading your terminals to support NFC, Walmart’s surrender suggests that the 'walled garden' approach to payments is no longer viable in a mobile-first economy.

Source: Finextra — Lending

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