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US supermarket giant Walmart has been steadily rolling out a new app that could make the weekly food shop much less of a chore.
From within the Walmart Pay app, users can not only store shopping lists and their loyalty card points, but also pay at the checkout directly from within the app.
With QR codes placed at checkouts, all a user has to do is scan it from the app to pay for their shop. It means a contactless payment machine isn’t needed, and the system works across iOS and Android devices – so it’s open to a lot of users.
After starting out as a fairly small trial, the service has now expanded to more than 30 US states in the last two months, including New York and California.
According to Walmart 22 million of their customers use it each month, which suggests it has already proved to be a hit with customers.
The question is then, could this be the way forward for shopping? Native mobile payment systems, such as Apple Pay and Android Pay are both extremely useful and unlike Walmart can in theory be used anywhere – but retailers have to first take the steps to implement contactless payments.
Walmart Pay doesn’t require any of that, all that’s needed is a QR code that is then scanned by the customer’s phone as it’s running the app. It’s a quicker solution for retailers who don’t want to, or can’t yet afford to upgrade their payment systems to support the likes of Android Pay.
Of course the drawback is that this is an app that only works in one place, as opposed to the digital wallet and tap-and-pay systems that can be used anywhere as well as on the London transport network.
Though it is still very early days for Walmart Pay, finding a middle ground between these two systems could prove the best way forward in terms of getting smartphone owners to more actively use mobile payments.
