The year is 2026 and Walmart still doesn’t accept Apple Pay at any of its stores in the United States. This makes it one of the last remaining major retailers to not support Apple’s contactless payment platform.
Here are a few reasons why Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay …
No, Walmart doesn’t accept Apple Pay
There’s one important thing to note: Walmart doesn’t accept any form of NFC payment in the United States. It’s not just a limitation on Apple Pay. The retailer doesn’t take Google Pay, Samsung Pay, or even let you tap your contactless physical card to pay. This story also focuses on the United States. Most Walmart locations in Canada, for example, do accept Apple Pay.
Walmart Pay
First, Walmart has its own contactless payment platform called Walmart Pay, which it launched in 2016. Walmart Pay, however, isn’t an NFC-based tap-to-pay platform like Apple Pay. Instead, it’s based on a QR code infrastructure.
To use Walmart Pay, you have to add a debit or credit card to the Walmart app on your iPhone, then scan a QR code at checkout to pay with your iPhone. It’s not nearly as convenient as Apple Pay.
Scan and Go
Walmart also has its Scan and Go platform for Walmart+ subscribers. This allows people to use the Walmart or Sam’s Club app to scan items as they shop, then go to self-checkout to finalize their purchase without having scan all their items at once. Apple Pay also isn’t supported when using Scan and Go.
Data collection
This might be the biggest reason Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay. Walmart relies on collecting your data to build profiles on your purchasing patterns and trends. Tracking this type of purchase history is something Walmart does for targeting advertising, marketing, and more.
When you use Walmart Pay, it’s incredibly easy for Walmart to build that customer profile on you. When you use Scan and Go, all of that same information is handed over.
When you use Apple Pay or other payment methods, it’s much harder for Walmart (and other retailers) to do this. Apple Pay’s privacy and security protections, like not sharing any information about your actual card with the retailer, makes this type of tracking trickier.
This is why Walmart wants people to use Walmart Pay if they want to pay from their phone. If you check out with Walmart Pay or Scan and Go, everything is linked to your Walmart account. If you had the option to pay with Apple Pay, you’d share a lot less information with Walmart.
Apple Pay fees
One common theory is that Walmart doesn’t support Apple Pay because it doesn’t want to pay fees to Apple. This isn’t true. There are no additional fees for a business to accept Apple Pay. They only pay the standard card processing fees regardless of whether the transaction is contactless or not. Apple’s fee is typically charged to issuing banks.
Retailers do need to upgrade payment terminals to newer models that support contactless transactions. Walmart has actually updated payment terminals in many of its stores to these newer models. However, they manually disable all NFC features of those terminals to try and force people to use Walmart Pay instead.
Walmart’s response
In a statement last year, Walmart emphasized that it believes Walmart Pay is a more convenient solution for shoppers than Apple Pay:
We do not accept NFC and instead have implemented convenient solutions, such as Walmart Pay, that provide our customers easy, touchless payments on any smartphone. We have also invested in innovative technologies that go beyond payments, such as Scan & Go, which allow Sam’s Club and Walmart+ members to bypass the checkout altogether, providing a truly touchless shopping experience.
9to5Mac’s Take
None of these reasons are valid.
The fact that Walmart still doesn’t accept Apple Pay is nothing short of user hostile. It boils down to data collection and control, even if it comes at the major expense of customer convenience. I don’t go to Walmart often, and while there are a lot of reasons for that, the lack of Apple Pay support is one of those reasons.
A quick search on social media shows that Walmart shoppers are growing increasingly frustrated by the company’s lack of Apple Pay support. It’s a limitation that’s once again going viral for all the wrong reasons.
Walmart has shown no signs of changing its mind. Many long-time Apple Pay holdouts have caved, including Kroger, Home Depot, and H-E-B. Walmart, however, has only dug its heels in.
Does Walmart’s lack of Apple Pay support affect your shopping habits? Do you use Walmart Pay? Let us know down in the comments.
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