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Walmart Pay takes on Apple Pay using register-mounted QR codes
Walmart Pay takes on Apple Pay using register-mounted QR codes
Walmart is continuing its ongoing avoidance of supporting Apple Pay, by launching its own rival mobile payment service for use in its retail outlets. Running within the current Walmart app, Walmart Pay will let customers pay for goods at the checkout in stores using their smartphone, with payment extracted from any major credit, debit, pre-paid, or Walmart gift card linked to the account via the app.
Rather than using contactless payments, Walmart Pay relies on QR codes in order to function, though the transaction is slightly unusual. To pay, shoppers must open the app and select Walmart Pay, which turns on the camera. The customer then scans the QR code displayed on the register, to associate it with the transaction. After the shopping is scanned and bagged, a receipt is then viewable from within the app.
"We made a strategic decision to design Walmart Pay to work with almost any smartphone and accept almost any payment type – even allowing for the integration of other mobile wallets in the future," said senior VP for services Daniel Eckert. "The result is an innovation that will make the ease of mobile payments a reality for millions of Americans."
While introducing a new payment system is risky, especially considering there are other well-established alternatives available, Walmart Pay does at least have one thing in its favor. The Walmart app itself is used by 22 million customers every month, and is routinely among the top retail apps on the App Store and Google Play, which means the app already has a fairly sizable installation base, overcoming one of the hurdles to adoption by consumers.
Just another reason to avoid this store which I loathe. So open the phone, then open the app, navigate to the Walmart Pay, aim it at the terminal screen, and then accept the payment confirmation. That is SO much easier than getting my credit card out of my wallet..or wait, just holding my TouchID phone to the terminal!
By the way, Walmart, how'd that music store turn out? How's that VUDU movie club working? These guys remind me of Microsoft from the last decade...thinking that just putting their logo on something will make it a success.
Both Walmart and Apple are being a bit weird with their payment schemes. Pulling out a credit card is as easy or easier than dealing with a smartphone and, to my mind, a heck of a lot safer. When I lost a card last year, cancelling it was easy. If I'd lost my iPhone instead, it'd have been far more messy. Oh, and those who're wondering why there's all this Walmart hate, it's because rich, Whole-Foods-shopping liberals hate to see the mass of ordinary, non-NPR-listening people they hate getting products almost as good for far less money. It's envy, one of the nastier emotions.
Author of Untangling Tolkien and Chesterton on War and Peace
Huh? That makes no sense. Fingerprints can be copied. Regardless, both hunks of plastic (and metal) allow you to set a password.
I appreciate your opinion.
Inkling: Wow...thanks for that sociopolitical insight! I've never shopped at a Whole Foods nor considered/voted a liberal agenda...but thanks for making that seem obvious about anyone who doesn't shop at Walmart.
Actually, I hate Walmart for the fact that the entire shopping experience is awful...product is poorly stocked, prices are outdated or even wrong for similar items, staff is incompetent to their dept., and you spend two-thirds of your time in the store just waiting to check out of the only 3 open of 20 possible lanes! All just to save 1 or 2% in price.
Add to this that my company was (is) a vendor for Walmart (crafts, paper products, sewing) and I can tell you stories of their poor management structure, the failure to follow their own mandated strategies, their insistence on vendors lowering prices and paying for unsold product, and their terrible implementation of inventory distribution and stock replenishment (by their own admission).
Feel free to shop there, but ask yourself what you're really gaining beside supposed "low prices".
And.reg: meanwhile, in the real world, how many reports of this actually happening have their ever been? Oh wait, zero.
As for Walmart, some of us don't shop there because we dislike how the store is almost single-handedly responsible for the loss of 400,000 US manufacturing jobs, how it uses loss-leader pricing to close local businesses, how it underpays its employees so that taxpayers have to make up the difference (essentially we give money to the world's richest corporation), and how the company gives **nothing** back to the community out of its enormous profits. Yeah, so "liberal."
re: fingerprint spoofing, I think a vendor might take a dim view of somebody whipping out a fake finger and using that on the TouchID sensor. Also, FTA:
"[T]he sky isnt falling. The attack requires skill, patience, and a really good copy of someone’s fingerprint — any old smudge won’t work. Furthermore, the process to turn that print into a useable copy is sufficiently complex that it’s highly unlikely to be a threat for anything other than a targeted attack by a sophisticated individual."
- It took 6-7 years before the majority of the public accepted ATM machines, yes NFC will be quicker than that, but not instantaneous as the author wishes
- Who wants to have an app for every company they deal with unless they get a compelling 5% or more discount.
- Apple Pay at Trader Joes, McDonalds, or nearly everywhere, is 5 seconds from the time you reach for the phone. The new chip cards are 10-12 everywhere. Finding an app - a majority barely know how.
- I suspect the Walmart IT VP who started this project will see the end of his career looming soon. Whatever happened to Walmart’s video store, and music store? Smart is best at driving cost out of mature systems (retail, distribution, employees), but have not shown any ability to innovate since they forced the industry into barcoding 25 years ago so that they wouldn’t have to pay someone to stamp a price on every can of tomato sauce.)
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