While Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the United States, began rolling out support for Apple Pay in April, Walmart continues to resist adopting Apple’s payment platform.
The company, in turn, has continued to push its own Walmart Pay platform. Whereas Apple Pay is contactless and requires users to simply tap their iPhone or Apple Watch on the payment terminal, Walmart Pay relies on QR codes instead.
Walmart launched Walmart Pay across the United States way back in 2016. Since then, the platform has been slow to gain widespread adoption, and the move has generated some controversy, with customers asking for Apple Pay support at checkout. Walmart, in turn, has made the bizarre claim that Walmart Pay is more popular than Apple Pay.
“Walmart is so dumb for not having Apple Pay,” one user posted on Twitter today. “Walmart is still childish for not taking Apple Pay,” another writes. For some shoppers, Walmart’s decision not to accept Apple Pay has simply meant they shop at other retailers such as Target instead.
Walmart has yet to publicly reply to requests for comment as to the situation.
One current thought as to the holdout is that this has to do with the data restrictions. Apple does not share customer payment info with the merchant, something which Walmart relies heavily on to tie into their customer profile data models.
Walmart is by far the biggest Apple Pay holdout in the United States nowadays. Other notable chains that still don’t support the payment option include Home Depot and H-E-B. Neither of those companies has shown any intention of changing their stances.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via 9to5Mac and @SimplyY_Kiondra