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

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

macrumors.com

11 pointsmfiguiere17 comments

This is entirely about fees.

When a Visa, Mastercard, Amex, or Discover card is used about 1-3% of the purchase amount is paid from the merchant to banks. When a debit card is run on a low fee network (you can usually tell because you key in your PIN), as little as 0.05% + $0.21 is paid thanks to the Durbin Amendment. The receipt will show "US DEBIT" instead of Visa/MC. On the back of your debit card there's logos like NYCE, STAR, PLUS, Pulse, etc.

Apple Pay originally did not support "US DEBIT" and all transactions ran over the familiar higher fee networks. It was only later that true debit support was added. What this meant is that merchants who upgraded to tap capable card readers not only paid extra for the hardware and certification, but would increase the proportion of higher fee "credit" transactions in their mix of transactions.

Walmart is a discount retailer. Their modus operands is cost efficiency on everything: cost of goods sold, trucking, staffing, and in this case the 1% saved when a customer inserts their debit card and types a PIN instead of not typing a PIN. If a retailer has a 5% profit margin, shaving card fees in half would increase earnings 20%. This is the same reason why banks don't let you make loan payments via card and property managers don't let you pay rent via card or add a 3% surcharge.

Walmart is so large they can squeeze the credit card providers, I bet they get a damn good deal.

And Apple didn’t wanna be squeezed.

(This is the deal Costco has with their credit card - Visa pays them to be a Visa card).

Pretty sure Apple ran the numbers and concluded that not many iPhone toting folks don’t want the scandal of getting caught at a Walmart with its linoleum flooring and 5k fluorescent lighting. Jokes aside, they need to pursue this as an Amazon competitor and focus more on their online business accepting these payments.

"Apple said that Apple Pay is accepted at more than 90 percent of U.S. retailers"

I think Apple is lying. Isn't every American here acquainted with Mom and Pop retailers whose credit card machine only accepts magnetic stripe cards?

I bet they’re quickly fading away. I always got a chuckle out of credit card processor salespeople coming to my studio. They would act like their stuff was a good deal and were usually clueless about Square. One lady balked at Square’s transaction fee being slightly lower and said I’d make it up with a lower monthly fee. What she was selling “only” had a fee of something like $100-$200 a month.

When I told her I had absolutely no monthly fee she essentially just walked out the door herself, and that’s the only time I’ve seen a salesperson do that.

With out knowing much about how payment systems work; why did I never even question if Apple Pay/Google Pay would work when they originally appeared in Canada? I feel like Apple Pay has worked every where tap-to-pay has worked. Is that not the same in the states? As in you need a special Apple Pay compatible POS?

No, Walmart doesn’t accept any contactless payments in the US.

Can't imagine that will last, unless there's something particularly weird about the US. Pretty much everywhere that accepts credit cards also accepts contactless now, it's the same thing.

> why did I never even question if Apple Pay/Google Pay would work when they originally appeared in Canada?

Because you expect things to work.

> As in you need a special Apple Pay compatible POS?

POS terminal should support RFID [0] contactless payment to be able to talk with a card or phone, but the main thing is "Payment Tokenisation Specification"[1] and it should be supported by the bank of the merchant both in processing and legal agreements.

iOS device doesn't store your credit card (and it can't, otherwise it would be trivial to copy cards), but a token which is tied to your card.

Overall it's very interesting to look at [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Technology

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Availability

Unless Apple Pay works on Android phones, you're asking Walmart to support two incompatible e-pay methods (or not support Android phones). I would suspect Android phones are more common in their customer base than normally, and why would they wish to have two systems to support?

I don't understand this. Doesn't Walmart just need to support contactless payments?

As an example, I used Apple Pay over in Australia before it was launched over there. Since almost every credit card already supported contactless, and the vast majority of terminals supported contactless, it just worked.

Walmart seem to simply be avoiding contactless altogether.

Basically, yes!

Walmart Canada has the exact same point of sale hardware and software packages and accepts contactless payments with no issue.

Walmart would rather collect your Data(tm) in the US, so that's why you're forced into their crummy QR code in-app bullshit ecosystem.

QR codes also work with older phones, I assumed in my earlier statement that Walmart was going to use their system no matter what so asking for Apple Pay is an additional burden for them. Cheaper to make you change than change all of their equipment in the us. Recall Walmart lives for cheaper.

#stores Canada 402. #stores US 10585. Canada has been doing touch for years. US started not that long before covid and seemed to require signature vs pin. A whole lotta money to switch for little gain. Don’t visit all that often and not since covid, sorry.

There's not a lot of 'switch' required. They're deploying the exact same PEDs (payment devices) they use in Canada, and the TCxSky/4690 and 4690 General Sales Application are nearly identical.

They just have to change one global config option and re-IPL the lanes and contactless will just work.

Is it not just a matter of supporting contactless NFC payment, such as most physical cards these days?

Walmart doesn’t support G-pay (or whatever it’s called this week) either. In fact they don’t support any NFC-based contactless payment, AFAIK. This is plainly an attempt to shepherd users into their first-party QR-code-based Walmart Pay product, making everyone’s life slightly shittier in the process.

Every other country has sorted this so it’s really down to the US banking industry to make it happen. Don’t hold your breath.

Ah, the usual "Oh, poor, poor Walmart! You are asking them to spend money! They would bankrupt if they spend even $10 on it!"

And no, there is no such thing as "two incompatible e-pay methods", any POS terminal sold in the last 10 years has support for NFC contactless payment and it doesn't matter for terminal what exactly do you use. What matters is the agreement between merchant and bank to actually allow these methods and paying fees, look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33294877

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