Walmart Still Doesn't Accept Apple Pay in U.S. Despite Many Customer Requests

[monstermash]

Also, the point of my post was Walmart took a hit for not offering Apple Pay.

It's a hit Walmart has chosen to take. They're clearly not bothered by any potential loss here - probably because it is absolutely TINY compared to its $144 BILLION it made in FY2022. For comparison, the total GLOBAL NFC payments in 2021 was 1.78B....or about 1.2% of Walmart's profit. So...yeah....your potential contribution to Walmart's bottom line is "unimportant", to say the least.

People don't seem to realize that not all business is worth having all of the time. Businesses routinely don't go after every penny of profit that they could make, for various assorted reasons.

NFC and Contactless Payments: How They Work (2024) - Shopify

Looking to accept NFC and contactless payments for your business? Get the facts about NFC transactions and how to use them in this guide.

www.shopify.com

Walmart Gross Profit 2010-2025 | WMT

Walmart annual/quarterly gross profit history and growth rate from 2010 to 2025. Gross profit can be defined as the profit a company makes after deducting the variable costs directly associated with making and selling its products or providing its services. <ul...

www.macrotrends.net

 

[monstermash]

What hit did they take exactly? 🙄

Probably about thirty cents, all things considered.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

People shop at Walmart?

Yes, lots of people do. Even if some people here don't consider those shoppers as fellow people. They see them as lesser beings. Some of the takes in this thread have been really eye opening.

 

[coopguy]

To understand Walmart's refusal to take Apple Pay, you have to understand the contempt that Walmart has for Visa and Mastercard. Settle down if you're interested for a lengthy read on the relationship and why Walmart doesn't support Apple Pay, I'll try to give a tl;dr at the end.

(Note that I love Apple Pay, and I'm not disrespecting any choice of anyone here to refuse to shop at Walmart for their refusal to accept Apple Pay, or for any other reason - just context).

Every time you swipe your card (credit or debit - and swipe is a generic term, the interface [magswipe/insert chip/contactless chip or NFC payment like Apple Pay/card not present like a manually keyed or online transaction)] - the merchant pays fees to accept your card. These fees are charged by the merchant's bank (the "merchant acquirer") to the merchant. In turn, the merchant bank remits interchange (fees) to the issuing bank (the bank that issued your credit card).

In the EU, these fees on credit cards are capped (generally) to 0.3% of the transaction total plus a slight per transaction fee.
In Canada - these fees on credit cards are capped (generally) to 1.4% of the transaction total, plus a per transaction fee.
In the United States - these fees on credit cards generally constitute 2-4% of the transaction total, plus a per transaction fee.

As you can see - this provides for a much greater amount of each transaction to be sent to the bank issuing a credit card. This benefits users of US rewards credit cards with much more generous rewards than are offered in Canada (where rewards are generally much less) or in the EU (where rewards are scarce and many credit cards have annual fees). However - as a retailer - this is something that you hate. You are getting 2-4% of your revenue (what you take in) cut off from the top. If you operate on thin margins - like a 10% profit margin - then if you weren't paying 2-4% you might be making 12-14% profit margin. (Obviously this is an imperfect comparison and not everyone that visits walmart is paying in credit and other forms of payment have handling costs even cash but we don't want to overcomplicate it).

The CARD Act of 2009 required banks with at least 10B in assets to offer routing via a common secondary network for US Debit that charged 22 cents + 15 basis points of the transaction. This had a huge impact on interchange. Imagine an $100 transaction - before on a branded debit network (Visa/Mastercard) you could pay fees similar to credit of $2-$4 on that transaction. Secondary routing on PIN debit would allow you to process that at 37 cents. Obviously very appealing for a huge company!

The banks, Visa, and Mastercard were all concerned. Many started billing the "convenience" that if you selected credit at checkout, you had to sign instead of entering a PIN. Other banks required selecting credit on debit card transactions to waive a minimum balance, usually with 5-10 minimum transactions a month to avoid a checking account fee. Other banks (sometimes and sometimes not overlapping with the above banks) said you only earned rewards if you picked credit card. The reason for this is it forced debit routing on the more lucrative (2-4% fee) branded networks instead of the US debit AID.

Walmart didn't like this and was smart enough to take action - the first 6 digits of your credit/debit card are a Bank Identification Number, or BIN. If you map US credit and debit cards accordingly you can force PIN entry on the debit cards and not allow signatures to get the cheap processing.

Visa/MC didn't like this and sued Walmart. Walmart countersued (and sued, in other lawsuits over Visa/Mastercard being "unfair" with other retailers).

So Visa/MC and Walmart hate each other. They can't live without one another, but Walmart dreams of a world where they could either make Visa/MC irrelevant or at least influence towards them getting less of their money.

Enter MCX (Merchant Customer Exchange). We leverage what Starbucks did for QR Code Payments, and what Target did with the REDCard debit in getting people to directly connect checking accounts, and we cut out the big credit card networks entirely. Several huge retailers join. We'll offer some discounts and get them conditioned that this is mobile payment and render them irrelevant. Cue maniacal laugh. The beta app is eventually called CurrentC. CurrentC never leaves beta and has an embarrassing data leak. Most abandon the relationship - CVS tries CVS pay with a PDF417 barcode on phones as a stopgap, before giving up and re-enabling contactless. Walmart gets salty and decides to make Walmart Pay barcode based.

So where do we go from here? One third of Americans enter a Walmart store every single week. Most are price sensitive and will not switch from Walmart over being unable to use Apple Pay; at the same time, Walmart cannot force them to switch payment methods or there would be mass outrage.

So Walmart Pay is maintained out of spite, as a show of force against the card networks. It only accepts credit/debit cards so they still pay the processing fees to Visa/Mastercard. The threat is that the users of mobile payment aren't used to contactless payment any other way so if they gave incentive for say direct debit processing a la target REDCard, they can reduce the influence of the networks. And thus it's leverage for WM against Visa/MC against the card networks.

How effective this is - remains to be seen. Many other holdouts dropped Apple Pay resistance in the pandemic, including larger merchants. Sure Lowes and HD are still holding out with WM but that's more likely as a "not a priority how many options do you have?" thing rather than Walmart's stubborn war against the card networks.

(One note - WM's refusal to take Apple Pay is not an Apple Pay issue. Apple's cut from Apple pay transactions of 15 basis points [15 cents of an $100 USD transaction] plus 1 US Cent comes from the fees that the merchant's bank sends to the card issuing bank. So an Apple Pay transaction doesn't cost Walmart any more than another type of contactless transaction [other mobile wallet or contactless enabled physical card]).

tl;dr Walmart's refusal to take Apple pay comes from a longstanding hate of Visa/Mastercard and trying to leverage other forms of mobile payment to force lower fees for card acceptance with Visa/Mastercard

 

[spartan1967]

It's a hit Walmart has chosen to take. They're clearly not bothered by any potential loss here - probably because it is absolutely TINY compared to its $144 BILLION it made in FY2022. For comparison, the total GLOBAL NFC payments in 2021 was 1.78B....or about 1.2% of Walmart's profit. So...yeah....your potential contribution to Walmart's bottom line is "unimportant", to say the least.

People don't seem to realize that not all business is worth having all of the time. Businesses routinely don't go after every penny of profit that they could make, for various assorted reasons.

NFC and Contactless Payments: How They Work (2024) - Shopify

Looking to accept NFC and contactless payments for your business? Get the facts about NFC transactions and how to use them in this guide.

www.shopify.com

Walmart Gross Profit 2010-2025 | WMT

Walmart annual/quarterly gross profit history and growth rate from 2010 to 2025. Gross profit can be defined as the profit a company makes after deducting the variable costs directly associated with making and selling its products or providing its services. <ul...

www.macrotrends.net

Don't forget the point of how much positive press Apple Pay is getting right now with all this back & forth in this thread.

 

[1885507]

They see them as lesser beings.

There are two types of Walmart shopper: casual and professional

Casuals only go in as-needed once in a while: that's me. I've been to WM maybe 2-3 times in as many years (WM+ was the exception).

Professionals can go in every day, multiple times a week, and even on Sundays. Those people are the true retail alphas, they make the rest of us look weak.

Candidly, shopping at Walmart on a Sunday should be an olympic sport, right up there with Costco on a Sunday right after church.

 

[ShadowJade]

You can and I won't. I don't see Tim Cook offering to pay for my groceries.

And yet, we continue to lose the extra 1% for using tap-to-pay, and their system continues to track every aspect of their customers.

Look up “Current-C” if you forget what NFC they were willing get behind. All the care about is tracking spending habits.

 

[monstermash]

Comedy Moment!!

if you can't laugh at this, something is wrong with you.

 

[compwiz1202]

I guess just like Apple not willing to adopt RCS? 😆
Walmart does what it does because it can, and it's not stopping people from shopping at Walmart.

And once again it the fault of the consumers. If you dislike no AP at WM, then don't go AND give feedback why you aren't going anymore. I don't like WM, so I wouldn't go no matter how you could pay.

 

[compwiz1202]

What does this mean? Walmart sells apple devices. Walmart is great for cheap stuff during inflation and recession. But I don’t know anyone devoted to it…that’s Target😉

And at least Target added AP to their payments. And no one can touch them for curbside, even with them putting in the dumb space number signs now. Was even faster without those

 

[ProfessionalFan]

Costco on a Sunday right after church.

Never be me. I once on a Sunday with my family went shopping at Costco and then went to Red Lobster for lunch right after since it was in the same parking lot. I went from one packed building to another. My shopping + lunch trip took like 5 hours when it should have been maybe 2 tops.

 

[coopguy]

It's a hit Walmart has chosen to take. They're clearly not bothered by any potential loss here - probably because it is absolutely TINY compared to its $144 BILLION it made in FY2022. For comparison, the total GLOBAL NFC payments in 2021 was 1.78B....or about 1.2% of Walmart's profit. So...yeah....your potential contribution to Walmart's bottom line is "unimportant", to say the least.

People don't seem to realize that not all business is worth having all of the time. Businesses routinely don't go after every penny of profit that they could make, for various assorted reasons.

NFC and Contactless Payments: How They Work (2024) - Shopify

Looking to accept NFC and contactless payments for your business? Get the facts about NFC transactions and how to use them in this guide.

www.shopify.com

Walmart Gross Profit 2010-2025 | WMT

Walmart annual/quarterly gross profit history and growth rate from 2010 to 2025. Gross profit can be defined as the profit a company makes after deducting the variable costs directly associated with making and selling its products or providing its services. <ul...

www.macrotrends.net

NFC payment is poised to grow, but most of the world is tapping physical credit/debit cards. The $1.78 billion figure cited is based on "mobile payments", not NFC enabled contactless payment of all forms including tapping physical contactless enabled debit/credit cards.

If you enable NFC contactless, it's for all NFC payments - smart device or not. Many more people are tapping actual cards over devices.

And yet, we continue to lose the extra 1% for using tap-to-pay, and their system continues to track every aspect of their customers.

Look up “Current-C” if you forget what NFC they were willing get behind. All the care about is tracking spending habits.

CurrentC was barcode on mobile phone screen based, #1 it bypassed needing to retrofit points of sale with NFC readers, #2 it didn't rely on phones to ship with NFC (which many cheaper Android phones don't). By depending on something that didn't require NFC it would (theoretically) have discouraged merchants from acquiring hardware that supported NFC and therefore could simultaneously support non-CurrentC contactless payments. (Of course this didn't happen and CurrentC had a failure to launch, never leaving trial.)

 

[spartan1967]

Comedy Moment!!

if you can't laugh at this, something is wrong with you.

It was judgmental, demeaning and offensive. BTW, Apple Pay rules.

 

[compwiz1202]

And I'm sure the droid phones are 'cheaper', and their friends tell them to not buy Apple.
Just because they sell iPhones does not mean tons of people are buying them, and of those people, know how to use Apple Pay.

I know 'rich' people that can't figure out Apple Pay, so no classism implied here...

The only issue with Android, is a lot of the cheaper ones are also cheap, not just inexpensive. My Z Flip is nice, but it's a higher end. And once I figured out where the NFC chip was on the Flip, GP is as easy as AP.

 

[monstermash]

Never be me. I once on a Sunday with my family went shopping at Costco and then went to Red Lobster for lunch right after since it was in the same parking lot. I went from one packed building to another. My shopping + lunch trip took like 5 hours when it should have been maybe 2 tops.

Best time to go to our Costco is on Friday, middle of the day or just after 5PM. Almost no lines.

 

[monstermash]

It was demeaning and offensive.

Some people you just can't reach.

 

[compwiz1202]

NFC payment is poised to grow, but most of the world is tapping physical credit/debit cards.

But you still need to get the card out. GP/AP are still tons faster. The only thing superior for payment at least would be Demolition Man chips in the hand

 

[compwiz1202]

Never be me. I once on a Sunday with my family went shopping at Costco and then went to Red Lobster for lunch right after since it was in the same parking lot. I went from one packed building to another. My shopping + lunch trip took like 5 hours when it should have been maybe 2 tops.

Was this the holiday season. I remember trying to go to Texas Roadhouse then, and it was TWO AND HALF HOURS. I'm not waiting that long when I'm already hungry. And they only had the buzzers at the time. At least if they had texts, we could have gone shopping since it was in a mall.

 

[monstermash]

But you still need to get the card out. GP/AP are still tons faster. The only thing superior for payment at least would be Demolition Man chips in the hand

Yeah...after spending 20 minutes to get to walmart, another 5 to park and get into the store, 60 minutes wandering around looking for stuff, 10 minutes to check out, another 10 minutes to get back to my car and load it up with all the Chinesium I bought, 20 minutes to get home, 15 minutes to unload the car and put all that stuff away (140 minutes total), it's really important that I save that 5 seconds it takes to whip out my credit card and stick it into the card reader and put my card back into my wallet.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

Was this the holiday season. I remember trying to go to Texas Roadhouse then, and it was TWO AND HALF HOURS. I'm not waiting that long when I'm already hungry. And they only had the buzzers at the time. At least if they had texts, we could have gone shopping since it was in a mall.

I forget the time of year but it was absolute insanity in there. We waited it out cause we were hungry and there was a lack of options in the area.

 

[compwiz1202]

Yeah...after spending 20 minutes to get to walmart, another 5 to park and get into the store, 60 minutes wandering around looking for stuff, 10 minutes to check out, another 10 minutes to get back to my car and load it up with all the Chinesium I bought, 20 minutes to get home, 15 minutes to unload the car and put all that stuff away (140 minutes total), it's really important that I save that 5 seconds it takes to whip out my credit card and stick it into the card reader

Yea and I suppose you would be in line, so some people would be considerate enough to have payment ready. Why do people act clueless when it's time to pay?

 

[monstermash]

Yea and I suppose you would be in line, so some people would be considerate enough to have payment ready. Why do people act clueless when it's time to pay?

I was going to point out that by the time it is time to put my card in the reader, I've long since taken it out of my wallet and I'm ready to go - but I knew it would be lost on this crowd.

 

[bruinsrme]

I'm a long time Mac user who doesn't use any Apple 'services' much less an Apple card.

Should I be ..mad? I also dont shop at Walmart.. that website sucks.

I agree their website is horrible

 

[SalisburySam]

It’s the norm outside the US to have the waiter/waitress bring a wireless card reader to the table, but in the US that still doesn’t happen at any restaurants. None have the staff using wireless card readers at the tables. A few of them such as Chilis or Olive Garden have tablet-like devices on every table, and a few others such as Cheesecake Factory have an app, but the overwhelming majority offer neither of those two options and the staff must still take the patrons’ cards away from the table to process the card payments. It will take years for all those restaurants to bring payment to the tables.

Not sure where you are but even in our small town of 34,000 ApplePay is quite common (ex Walmart, Lowe’s, Kroger’s Harris-Teeter brand). And a high percentage of restaurants can completely handle payments at table side. And yes, in the US. And with tap-to-pay beginning (finally) to be offered by credit card companies, that too will hopefully become commonplace. I knew the ApplePay trend had reached tipping point when our local ABC store began accepting it several years ago.

 

[monstermash]

Was this the holiday season. I remember trying to go to Texas Roadhouse then, and it was TWO AND HALF HOURS. I'm not waiting that long when I'm already hungry. And they only had the buzzers at the time. At least if they had texts, we could have gone shopping since it was in a mall.

I wouldn't wait 2.5 hours for a free meal at the finest restaurant on Earth, even if it offered naked dancing girls for entertainment while waiting.

I mean.....damn.