Walmart has announced it’s going to support Chase Bank’s Chase Pay mobile payment platform, but the support comes with a catch. While online shoppers will be able to use Chase Pay directly, in stores they’ll need to use it via Walmart’s own mPayment app.
That app, Walmart Pay, was launched earlier this year, and was interpreted by many as a shot at rivals like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, which Walmart refuses to accept in its stores thanks to a longstanding feud over fees. It’s a feud over which Walmart is willing to sacrifice customer convenience, since unlike the leading mPayment rivals, Walmart Pay doesn’t allow for tap-and-pay functionality but requires customers to have merchants scan QR codes displayed on their phones at the point of sale. Walmart Pay also lacks biometric authentication features, since it doesn’t require fingerprint scans for transaction verification (as Apple Pay does) but instead relies on tokenized codes.
Still, Walmart’s embrace of Chase Pay suggests that the company sees rising interest in mobile payment methods among its customers. And given that a Walmart subsidiary in the UK was recently spotted testing out Apple Pay functionality, sooner or later the retailer may decide that it will be better business to accept Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and any other major mPayment methods its customers want to use.
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