Walmart began accepting contactless mobile wallets on August 24, 2026, at a first set of Walmart stores and Sam’s Club locations in the US, ending a refusal that dated back to October 2014. The retailer announced the change three days earlier, on August 21, and named Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Garmin Pay. It plans to reach every Walmart store and Sam’s Club in the country by the end of 2026.
The switch removes one of the most visible gaps in US wallet acceptance. Apple says Apple Pay is accepted at 85% of US retailers, which left Walmart, the country’s largest retailer, among the last major holdouts.
Tap to Pay works differently from Walmart Pay
Contactless wallets rely on near-field communication (NFC), which lets a phone and a terminal exchange data when they are a few centimeters apart. The phone hands the terminal a substitute card number, called a token, along with a cryptogram generated for that one transaction. The cardholder authenticates on the device with biometrics or a passcode, and no retailer app needs to be open. Walmart Pay works differently. The customer opens the Walmart app, the register displays a QR code, the app scans it, and the payment is charged to the card stored in the Walmart account.
| Feature | Walmart Pay | Contactless (Tap to Pay) |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | QR code shown on the register | NFC between phone and terminal |
| Customer action | open the app, then scan the code | hold the phone near the terminal |
| Data exchanged | a code shown on the register and read by the app | a card token and a single-use cryptogram |
| Underlying instrument | the card stored in the Walmart account | the card provisioned in the wallet |
The holdout began with a merchant-run rival to Apple Pay
Walmart’s refusal grew out of a collective strategy. The retailer was a founding member of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a consortium of US merchants formed in 2011 to build CurrentC, a mobile payment method the retailers themselves would control. When Apple Pay launched in the US in October 2014, several consortium members, Walmart among them, disabled NFC on their terminals. CurrentC was abandoned in 2016, the same year Walmart rolled out its own tool, Walmart Pay.
Acceptance costs frame Walmart’s payment strategy
Walmart pitches the move as more choice for shoppers. It called Tap to Pay “a great addition to the other payment options already offered like cash, credit card or Walmart Pay.” The trade press reads it through the cost of acceptance. Retail Dive and Payments Dive note that Walmart pays fees on cards it does not issue, and that it has spent years building rival instruments. Those include the card from OnePay, the fintech it backs, and buy now, pay later offers with Klarna and Affirm.
Contactless does not lower those fees on its own, because the credential inside the wallet is still a network card. What it does remove is a longstanding checkout complaint.
Fuel stations wait until mid-2027
The rollout comes in three waves. A first set of stores and clubs went live on August 24. Walmart then aims to cover all of its Walmart stores and Sam’s Club locations before the end of 2026, about 4,600 locations according to Retail Dive. The group’s fuel stations follow in mid-2027. The change applies to in-store payments at Walmart and Sam’s Club in the US only.
Walmart Pay and Scan & Go are not going away. Walmart said contactless comes on top of its existing options, which leaves shoppers with three separate checkout paths in store, two of them through a Walmart app.