Walmart hasn’t signed on to accept any mobile payment platforms, including dominant Android Pay and Apple Pay. It was one of the merchants behind the now-dormant CurrentC payment app, and launched its own barcode-based payment service tied to customer accounts on the retailer’s website. While the company claims that their goal is to provide a unified Walmart experience, why isn’t it also willing to let customers use the mobile payment app that they already have?

Walmart’s payment system has two obvious advantages. First, it works on older smartphones: any Android or iOS phone that can run Walmart’s app and has a working camera can be used. That’s an important advantage when you serve a wide swath of people, and not affluent ones with the newest smartphones.

They also already had millions of customers who already have the app installed, and who already have their payment data in Walmart’s systems. The mobile payments are a module of Walmart’s existing app, which can also be used for shopping or for scanning receipts for the Savings Catcher program.

Walmart’s own data shows that customers who have tried the app really like it, but the key is in getting them to try it and become comfortable with mobile payments.

“Walmart Pay is the least intuitive because you have to trigger an app and complete a scan through a barcode reader,” an expert on risk and compliance told Bankrate. Other payment apps require fewer steps: Apple Pay and Android Pay just have to be tapped on the payment terminal.

More importantly, those apps can be used anywhere. Walmart Pay use is limited. Yet Walmart has big plans for the app, and how it will be an integrated part of the experience of shopping at Walmart from anywhere.

“We’re building deeper relationships with our customers across our ecosystem and are looking forward to delivering new tools like Walmart Pay that allow them to use the Walmart App as their remote control for a faster, more convenient shopping experience,” the company’s VP of United States stores said in a statement.

Can it tell me where to find the Brita filters and the Cheetos so I can get in and out of Walmart as quickly as I can? That’s the shopping experience that I want.

Walmart in no hurry to add other mobile payment options [RetailWire]
Walmart Pay: So good or so what? [Bankrate] (Warning: auto-play video)

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