Why Walmart still doesn't support Apple Pay

The article misses the other reason that Walmart has invested in multiple attempts at electronic payments: not paying merchant fees to Visa and Mastercard. That's why their system requires you hooking up to your bank account directly.

All of Walmart's attempts at this have been focused on making Walmart's bottom line better, which is why every one of them has failed, whereas Apple Pay is making my payment experience better, and why I use it all the time.

I think one interesting thing that the article does mention is that Walmart does accept Apple Pay and contactless payments in Canada. I suspect this is because Canadians pretty much expect contactless to be accepted anywhere they shop, compared to in America where there are still many places (restaurants mostly) that have limited support for it.

I’ve noticed a recent change in Walmart Scan & Go (Walmart Pay) that really illustrates how far their purchase tracking goes. If you’ve set up Walmart Pay with a credit card, and you later use that same physical card in-store, Walmart now appears to associate those transactions with your account as well.

I’m fairly confident of this because the app has started showing me in-store purchases that were not made using Walmart Pay. It suggests they’re linking transactions at the card-number level, not just through the app.

I suspect they may also be tying in-store purchases to your profile if you’ve ever placed an online order, though that part is speculation.

While the previous submission didn't get many upvotes (6) the comments (3) are interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674968

I didn't get that far online. As soon as they said that I needed to create an account to buy something and that it gave them the right to spam me, I closed the window.

Now, they may have later said that Californians have a right to "no spam" (or not) but I really don't care at this point.

I find it so annoying that they disable the NFC readers on their terminals just to force people to scan a QR code. It makes the whole checkout process feel completely outdated compared to every other store.

To me the annoying part isn't that they don't accept Apple Pay (or any phone-app pay except their own). I don't have any Apple devices and I don't use Google Pay (or anyone else's phone-app pay). While TFA is correct that Apple Pay (or Google/Samsung/whatever pay) doesn't cost WalMart more than a physical credit card - TFA doesn't mention a highly relevant detail: a phone-app payment company can act as the 'issuing bank' and make a tiny fraction of a percent more (like ~0.3%) for being the clearinghouse. Not all phone-pay apps set up as an issuing bank as there's some overhead but it's more than worth it if you're the world's largest retailer. Note: this fee is not the same as the 2-3% "merchant fee". The clearinghouse fee is much smaller and never goes back to the merchant - unless the merchant IS is the phone-app company. I think WalMart figures "If anyone is 'playing bank' and making even a tiny rake in our store, it should be us."

The collateral damage is that, as a result, WalMart stopped taking plain old plastic credit card tap-to-pay which I prefer to use because it's faster, more secure and far more reliable than 'swipe card' or 'insert card chip' (because WalMart's physical readers are often flaky on self-checkout stations due to their high volume usage).

I suspect the main reason WalMart attaches a metal plate over the contactless area on their payment terminals which blocks ALL forms of tap-to-pay is simply that credit card tap-to-pay appears the same as phone-app tap-to-pay (because both are 'contactless') and one type of tap-to-pay working while the another type doesn't "would confuse customers". Which is a dumb reason to disallow a faster, more reliable form of payment that some people would like to use. It's not a money thing because to WalMart a credit card tap-to-pay is exactly the same as a swipe or chip insert of the same card, whereas a phone-app tap-to-pay isn't the same - even if the user settles the phone app bill using the same physical credit card.

Neither does Home Depot.