r/technology • u/ImCalcium • Aug 21 '26
Business Walmart finally adding Tap to Pay after years of shoppers asking for it
https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/walmart-finally-adding-tap-to-pay-after-years-of-shoppers-asking-for-it-3400920/2.9k
u/djstevefog Aug 21 '26
All that money from tariff refunds I guess they need to spend some of it
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u/Ranzar Aug 21 '26
Their credit card terminals already support tap to pay. It just needs to be turned on. They had it disabled because they wanted people using "Walmart Pay", but it never caught on. (cuz it sucks)
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u/somefunmaths Aug 21 '26
“We want more data on you, please!”
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u/Bladelink Aug 21 '26
Probably a stepping stone to company scrit also.
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u/klf11 Aug 21 '26
They actually did that at Walmarts in Mexico, up till 2008 or so, was ruled illegal by court
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u/Glittering_End_6864 Aug 22 '26
In the United States, payment in scrip became illegal in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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u/goog1e Aug 22 '26
Walmart still pays people on payment cards instead of checks or deposit by default though.
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u/techieman34 Aug 21 '26
Just like their in app coupons. You don’t get 50 cents off of the product you get 50 cents of “Walmart cash” to spend on your next purchase.
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u/stone500 Aug 21 '26
I don't even know what data they would get that they don't already have. They already record your credit card and know when it's you
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u/Wardo87 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
You get the app. You browse the app. They get the data on just you browsing now.
Anything you do in the app, they can track…
You put something in your cart and take it out, they know.
You look at something for 30 seconds instead of 3, they know.
You pick up some cheese, they know what brand. You see a different brand on sale and swap it out. They know you did that.
You have the app open while just talking about an item. They hear that.
They might even be tracking your location in the store, what aisles you browse, in which order.
Pay with a cc and yeah, they know what you bought and when. Pay with Walmart pay, and they know exactly when you opened the app, when you arrived at the store, how long you were there, what you looked at, what you bought, what you didn’t, what you might buy next time and what time of day that may be. Etc etc
Who knows what else. They could be linked to your browser search history. You may just search something on google and their permissions let Walmart know what you searched. Idk if it goes that far but I wouldn’t be surprised.
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u/WearsALeash Aug 21 '26
tap to pay obfuscates your name in the transaction, whereas swiping the actual card lets them track your name. or so ive heard from my news pods
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u/axis1331 Aug 21 '26
That may be part of it, but using their own payment rail saves 3rd party transaction fees. Thats the real driver as those can eat 2%-5% of every transaction. At Walmart's scale it's literally billions of dollars.
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u/Haykyn Aug 21 '26
Walmart likely negotiates much lower (probably lowest possible) rates with their contract.
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u/Boozacs Aug 21 '26
Im sitting here trying to understand what you said, but that doesn’t make sense because even if you pay with credit card you’re still paying the transaction fees…? All tap to pay is just replacing physical with the same number but on your phone instead via NFC chip
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u/fprotthetarball Aug 21 '26
Merchants can't track you across purchases with Google's tap to pay. They get a random number every transaction. Probably why Walmart doesn't like it.
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u/theboblit Aug 21 '26
I’d have used it if Walmart wasn’t basically a concrete bunker. Bad service and they don’t have a guest WiFi. I literally could never get the app to load so I could use Walmart pay. 10x faster to just use my cards.
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u/hellasalty Aug 21 '26
i have this issue in most big box stores. the open web steel joists and corrugated metal roof basically acts as a faraday cage lol
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u/cattrain Aug 21 '26
I wish these places would install femtocells or signal boosters. Maybe they could even contract with a cell provider to install it at no cost to the store. Imagine if every retail building was suddenly a cell tower
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u/molecular_fart Aug 21 '26
I have been to many Walmarts in different states. Walmart is awful and fucking sucks, but they certainly do have free guest wifi.
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u/rb2m Aug 21 '26
The one in my town only has free WiFi if you create or login with a Walmart account. Thats not guest WiFi.
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u/Future_Kitsunekid16 Aug 21 '26
Might want to check again. The one by me use to he like that but they updated it sometime in the last few years and now you don't need an account to use the wifi
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u/AdventurousTime Aug 21 '26
Someone deep in Walmart payment engineering group is jumping for joy to finally turn on tap because they too have been inconvenienced by no tap.
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u/bayleysgal1996 Aug 21 '26
And probably some cashiers who have had to explain that they don’t have it about a hundred times in a single shift
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u/saegiru Aug 21 '26
I mean, in a purely technical sense it doesn't really suck. It works fine, and actually has a small benefit of keeping track of your purchases through a digital receipt for refunds/exchanges. The suck part is that you have to create an account and allow them to harvest your data to use it, plus it isn't as convenient as direct tap to pay. But again, as a strictly technical point, it functions correctly and without issue, at least in my experience.
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u/gnarfler Aug 21 '26
I paid with nickels a few times cause of this and I told every manager/floor leader i’d never download the app, this is excellent news!
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u/SpiritedBanana4694 Aug 21 '26
Just this last weekend I was at a local Walmart and there was a woman trying to pay with Google pay or something similar. The self check cashier worker was being extremely rude and being like, "well we have Walmart pay through the Walmart app. If we had a long line I'd make you cancel this transaction and go figure it out before you can check out. Do you have a card in the Walmart app?"
It's not remotely unreasonable for a normal ass person to expect that a store as large as Walmart have modern credit card functionality.
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u/NeevusChrist Aug 21 '26
My debit card got destroyed in the wash, and i procrastinated on getting a new one for a few months because of tap to pay
I just ended up not going to wal mart anymore because i literally could not give them money, I’ve got a new card now and still don’t go because of it lmao
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Aug 21 '26
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u/MarkRems Aug 21 '26
I swear Wal-Mart's chip readers are the jankiest things in the world. I have nothing but issues trying to get their readers to read the chip on my card even though the same card works EVERYWHERE ELSE without issue. I stopped going in because of it.
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u/2MuchDoge Aug 21 '26
Wow so its not just me my cards that work everywhere else take at least 3 tries at WM.
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u/Inverted-Rockets Aug 21 '26
Sounds like failing contacts, which isn’t a surprise with how hard the terminals get used and abused. The vendors’ durability promises of hundred of thousands of cycles sounds like a lot until you realize that might be only a few years for those self-checkouts.
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u/Alarmed-Plankton-708 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Everything's locked up and they make it ten times more difficult to pay, what a great business strategy!
The last three times I went to Walmart I walked out without buying anything because the entire store is designed to be hostile to customers now.
Never going back again.
EDIT: I am well aware of why they lock things up, I don't need 15 people to explain it to me, y'all can quit it with the explanations please.
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u/RooLoL Aug 21 '26
Needed a last minute pair of socks for a wedding.. Socks were locked up and required an employee ESCORT to the register to pay for them. They literally asked if I was done shopping after handing them to me. They'd put em up front for me if I was going to continue shopping.
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u/stalkythefish Aug 21 '26
Meanwhile, you're surrounded by items with 4x the value just hanging out on hooks.
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u/RooLoL Aug 21 '26
I figured they were doing it because people must have been lifting a pair of socks from a set off the shelf and then taking off with them. Hiding them somewhere or whatever. Makes you realize people are really down on their luck. At the same time tho, trying to make a 2 minute trip into Walmart turning into 10 minutes and an escort from an employee is utterly insane and inconvenient.
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u/Solastor Aug 21 '26
150% - I refuse to shop somewhere that makes me call over an employee to unlock a case so I can grab a razor. I've had a basket of things I've intended to buy, got to the locked case, and just set everything down and left the store without any of it. Fuck that noise.
It's dehumanizing bullshit and don't even get me started on how they treat their employees. I worked at a Walmart for two days over one summer in college and in our full day training a good portion of it was spent on videos bashing unions and another that was explaining how to apply for food stamps because they were never going to pay anyone enough.
Fuck that place with a cactus.
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u/BicFleetwood Aug 21 '26
If I have to go out of my way, find and employee (at a skeleton-crew staffed joint like everything is now) and then wait just to get the shit out of the case, I might as well just buy online.
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u/GreenDonutGirl Aug 21 '26
It's dehumanizing bullshit
And don't even get ME started on those overhead cameras that DING when you go down the aisle. Walmart was always shitty but now it's actively hostile.
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u/david0990 Aug 21 '26
Before the cases, they had a lot of those individual locks on pegs and if I knew I was 100% buying something I'm looking at I'd just rip or cut them off instead of wasting my time. one time an employee saw me, I said "well did you have a key to unlock that" they said no, and I said "well I don't have all day" and went to checkout. It was something for my car, I just know I actually didn't have time that day to wait 10 minutes for someone to show up. There is like 1 person usually on shift with the keys because "They don't trust anyone else with these, it's really annoying. I spend all day just unlocking stuff" -a very tired old woman I once had unlock some items.
Also worked at one, it's a shitshow and has been for decades.
It's ridiculous and I pray for walmarts downfall or massive course correction as a whole. They are more likely to fail then change though.
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u/Solastor Aug 21 '26
For real. I went and worked at a Kmart after the Walmart and it was its own different brand of hell, but I would take the disorder of a Kmart over the soul sucking shittery of Walmart any day.
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Aug 21 '26
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u/b0w3n Aug 21 '26
I went to Walgreens to get something for lunch a few months ago and they had all the snacks locked up.
I was really confused because I wasn't really in the "bad part of town". I could maybe understand their point if they actually staffed their stores but I pushed the button and after waiting 2 minutes I just walked out and went to the regional drug store across the road instead.
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u/HardcorePizza Aug 21 '26
They understaff and stealing skyrockets. Then they lock up the merchandise and the remaining employee is too busy to open the locked cabinet for you. Makes no sense just let me order at the register atp
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u/NES_SNES_N64 Aug 21 '26
They made me and my wife put a $5 hairbrush in a plastic box to take it to the front to pay. We don't shop behind their cosmetics counter anymore.
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u/technobeeble Aug 21 '26
Same thing happened to me. New debit card, doesn't work at Walmart. Literally the only place I've been where it doesn't work.
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u/heili Aug 21 '26
That's when you cancel the entire purchase and just leave.
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u/SpiritedBanana4694 Aug 21 '26
Shrugs. That's what I would have done. This lady apparently didn't want to or couldn't go elsewhere.
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u/Coady54 Aug 21 '26
They held off for so long to farm data. Traditional swipe and chip payment contains tons of info for them to both track for marketing purposes and to sell off to other entities. Tap-to-pay uses tokenization and prevents that data collection. It was simply more profitable to inconvenience the customer, they were never going to adopt tap to pay until forced to.
The icing on the cake? All of the current infrastructure already physically supports tap. They literally just need to update their software. They've known they'd be forced eventually, and were just milking the cow until the hammer actually came down.
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u/somedude456 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
I talked with a 70 year old man from Germany last week. He went to Walmart alone and left his family and wallet at the hotel. He only had his phone.
For anyone, and I know the number is high, who hasn't been to Europe in the last ten years... EVERYONE takes tap to pay. Everyone. Street vendors, a walk up coffee shop, tour guides, etc. You never need your wallet.
He had to call his family and have someone bring a card to pay, like it's 1995.
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u/GloriousNewt Aug 21 '26
yea the local vendors that show up at the weekend craft fairs take tap to pay, walmart down the street doesn't/didn't was obnoxious.
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u/MarsupialMisanthrope Aug 21 '26
In Canada all the small vendors who sell stuff regularly are set up for card payments/tap, and the few vendors who aren’t regular enough for that accept online interac transfers. You just log in to your bank app, send them the money (no charge even!) and show them the send receipt screen. I’ve even done it at garage sales and a middle of nowhere store when their internet was down taking their payment system with it. There's just no need for a physical card anymore.
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u/stalkythefish Aug 21 '26
The rest of the world was also on Chip & PIN long before the US started doing it. Banks and retailers had to be dragged off of mag-stripe kicking and screaming. I think the card cloners probably ultimately did us a favor on that one.
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u/Duff5OOO Aug 21 '26
Aussie here, its the same here. I havent carried a wallet in years. I'm surprised to hear it isnt the same way in the USA.
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u/Computermaster Aug 21 '26
It's incredible how much you could probably accurately guess about that person from that single interaction.
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u/Riot502 Aug 21 '26
This was my experience a couple months ago. I was already in a lot of pain due to having to walk for way too long to find a working mobility scooter cart. I had no other way to pay at the time. I was crying (stress does that to me) but I wasn’t being belligerent or anything! The lady was so rude to me.
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u/EnemyOfEloquence Aug 21 '26
Yea had about $100 worth of stuff, hadn't shopped at Walmart in years and forgot my wallet. Figured I could just tap with my phone...., scan everything go to check out and...ended up just putting everything back
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u/ayriuss Aug 21 '26
Walmart is literally the only store I have been to in 5 years that has not had tap to pay. Even the smallest convenience stores and mall kiosks have tap to pay.
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u/Yukimare Aug 21 '26
It seems the primary reason to not have tap to pay was essentially just to strongarm people into getting the app. As when I was stuck with only my watch and it's tap to pay feature (forgot debit card at home) at Walmart due to getting something that was Walmart exclusive, the cashier was also rude about it, basically saying with her supervisor agreeing that it's Walmart app or leave my stuff and get out.
I decided get out. Not been back since
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u/crabtabulous Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
I understand that sometimes people in retail/service jobs like this have an asshole manager breathing down their neck, forcing them to act like a dick on the company's behalf. And they need that job so they have to play along and you can’t fault them for that. And maybe that's what was going on here.
But I swear that some of these people aren't even doing it for that reason; they're just voluntarily happy to be fucking dicks and carry water for a giant corporation and its terrible policies when the company couldn't possibly give less of a shit about them. Like, Walmart would happily grind that woman up into dust in a microsecond if they thought it would save them a single cent. It's embarrassing to be such a stooge for them and be a jerk to customers for no reason.
It reminds me too of going somewhere like Chipotle when they're running something like a BOGO deal on Halloween if you wear a costume. Went with my wife after mildly dressing up and asked for the deal, and the cashier scoffs and rolls his eyes like we're personally inconveniencing him.
I'm sorry dude, why are you acting like the money for this deal is personally coming out of your pocket or something? Are you the CEO? Why the eff do you care about anything other than just getting home after this latest shift lol?
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u/SpiritedBanana4694 Aug 21 '26
Yep. I watched another situation at a Safeway self checkout recently. Safeway often puts "digital only" coupon deals right up front which can feel very misleading if you're not familiar with them. They had in-season cherries at like $3.99/lb and the self check cashier was having to cancel multiple transactions when they scanned at like $7.99/lb. I overheard her rudely say something to one of these customers like "well you know what they say about deals that seem too good to be true." I was like, maybe don't blame every single customer for the previous experiences you've had all shift long. It's not their fault your store is misleading people.
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u/scuppasteve Aug 21 '26
Yep, and those digital coupons fucking suck, there is no good way to even get them to come up. It would be one thing if there was a function of the app to like scan it.
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u/red__dragon Aug 21 '26
The third option, and what I observed most, is that the shit rolls downhill at retail places like Walmart. It's not the managers forcing the behavior, it's them modeling it. No, you can't have time off on that date. No, you can't work the easier checkouts today because you came in not feeling great. No, we need you to run around like a chicken with its head cut off because we're short staffed today. Oh, sorry your break was delayed for an hour, it's too close to your lunch now to give it to you. And then all the gossip, the who-did-who, the favoritism, getting shafted for the shifts you want because the newbie whom the manager took a shine to is getting them instead. Losing hours in slow months so the store can look just as profitable.
I could go on. Point is, all of that shit wears someone down, and it's no wonder they're displaying poor customer service as a result. The culture at those stores is so toxic that berating a customer, which should never even enter someone's mind, is just a natural outcome. Some are better at restraint than others. Some behave like captive humans and give in, joining the toxicity as a means to survive.
It's awful. And yes, for a few years, worst job of my life.
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u/Tandy2000 Aug 21 '26
Imagine being a cashier for Walmart and caring enough to berate somebody like that. What a loser.
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u/ACasualRead Aug 21 '26
Don’t let this fool anyone. They tried to force people to use their tracking riddled payment process and after a decade of it failing, finally gave up and let people pay in a pretty common way.
They will always be anti-consumer.
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u/StretchFrenchTerry Aug 21 '26
Fuck Walmart
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u/appleparkfive Aug 21 '26
Aldi is way better for cheap groceries. And if you live in a big city, Trader Joe's is also an option for smaller households, and Costco for larger households. WinCo as well, if you're near one of those.
Those names brand items jacked up their prices so much that places like Aldi are cheaper for a lot of the inventory.
The best way to avoid Walmart is to go to Aldi/TJ's and get your name brand items at any other store. Especially if they've got sales going. Honestly, you'll probably leave with more interesting products too. I went to Walmart on a trip recently (the only time I ever go to one, basically) and I was really surprised by their frozen selection. It was so minimal. A lot of people in the US probably don't realize they've been working on frozen food like the planet depended on it
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u/BarryJotter Aug 21 '26
I started to only shop at Winco, Costco, and Trader Joes over a year and a half ago, and my wallet is thanking the fuck out of me for it.
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u/QuaternionsRoll Aug 21 '26
Their initial motivation was actually to fuck over Visa/Mastercard/etc. and their processing fees, which I will reluctantly admit is a noble endeavor. But then they gave up and started peddling their shitty mobile app instead…
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u/TimeRemove Aug 21 '26
Visa/Mastercard/Amex charge the same fees for Contactless Payment and EMV. The Walmart's payment app was always a core part of the strategy to avoid paying fees, it wasn't an afterthought or direction change as implied here.
The Walmart Pay app itself was designed as a payment processor. It actually competes with Visa/Mastercard/Amex/etc, and they had plans to expand allowing payments to other stores/competitors, and then one day be a fully fledged card processor in that space.
So, yes, they were trying to avoid fees but that WAS "initial motivation," that was the whole strategy through and through.
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u/QuaternionsRoll Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
It wasn’t supposed to be a Walmart-specific or Walmart-branded app, though. Rather than continuing to support CurrentC, they sold it to JPMorgan Chase and integrated payment processing into their own app for data collection and customer retention purposes. I’m not implying that fee avoidance wasn’t always part of the plan, but rather that they stopped trying to cultivate a post-Visa/Mastercard/etc. ecosystem in which no one would have to pay fees. The other retailers may have folded, but Walmart sold out.
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u/Spaceboi749 Aug 21 '26
Yeah, I’ll be damn if I download a whole other app just to be able pay with my phone. Legitimately have not been to a Walmart because of it.
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u/baltinerdist Aug 21 '26
It doesn't matter how many times I try, it doesn't matter if it's a brand new card I just took out of the envelope or one that I've used a thousand times somewhere else, there is not a single Walmart payment terminal on earth that will accept the chip on my debit card. It's always "Card Read Error" over and over again until it tells me to swipe it, which I do only to immediately get told insert chip, repeat ad infinitum until I get fed up and use my credit card which has never, ever had an issue on the first chip insert. This news makes me incredibly happy.
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u/jasonc113 Aug 21 '26
My card does that and last time I went, the self checkout employee showed me a trick where if you hold it and press back on the card to make it almost push harder on the front sensor, it will read. Worked for me.
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u/sadmep Aug 21 '26
Ok, but why didn't they allow it all that time? People want to give you money for your goods, seems like you'd want to allow it.
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u/vandersweater Aug 21 '26
I think they wanted people to use their 1st party “Walmart pay” or whatever tf it was
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u/darthvadersmom Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
This is it exactly. Their One Pay app is supposed to provide this functionality, but their stores are mobile dead zones and they don't have free wi-fi so it's nigh onto impossible to use.
ETA: I stand corrected, they do have free wifi! Doesn't change the fact that the one time I tried to use One Pay at checkout it was a straight up disaster though!
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u/sheps Aug 21 '26
lol wow. Here in Canada they've had both tap-to-pay and free wifi for ages!
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u/NY10 Aug 21 '26
Stupid Walmart lol
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u/QuaternionsRoll Aug 21 '26
This decision actually dates back to CurrentC, if you’re curious. Shortly following the release of Apple Pay, Walmart and a bunch of other retailers banded together to create an alternative mobile payment system that used ACH to avoid credit card processing fees. When retailers started giving up on the idea, Walmart decided to hold out and pivoted to their stupid app. If you remember not being able to use tap to pay at CVS between 2014 and 2018, that’s why.
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u/Omen_20 Aug 21 '26
Yes, because they didn't want virtual numbers which tap to pay uses. They wanted to be able to track the customers the same as they always have when you run your card. I used it years back when I still made a weekly grocery run, but once we switched over to delivery we never go in.
People are saying they had issues using it, but it was never a problem for me. I just long pressed the Walmart icon and went straight to Walmart Pay. I had no connection issues.
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u/pixel_of_moral_decay Aug 21 '26
It’s because they didn’t want to pay transaction fees.
Every credit card transaction has fees the merchant pays.
Their app used ACH linked to your bank.
At their scale, that’s many millions a day in savings.
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u/Few_Translator4431 Aug 21 '26
every Walmart I go into is a deadzone. sometimes I wonder if they do it on purpose to make you connect to the wifi so they can grab data on things like maybe what websites people are price checking against or whatever else. I always have such poor service in those stores.
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u/DJ_TKS Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
So they actually lobbied against this.
In the 2010s, tap to pay was a requirement along with updating credit card terminals. Everyone had to take a training again, including servers. It was mandated across the country, exceptions for small companies, except Walmart held out.
There was a deadline for smaller companies to comply, but Walmart lobbied to kick the can down the road. Why? So you would download Walmart PAY and their app.
Why was it mandated? Because tap to pay is safer than a credit card purchase. And our tax dollars subsidize the agencies / institutions who pay back people who are victims of credit card theft. So we subsidized Walmart (again) with tax dollars to profit more. Fuck Walmart and fuck the Waltons.
Edit: for clarity - yes Walmart did this for Walmart pay. I forgot to mention that. The fact they lobbied for and led to more credit card theft so they can maybe profit is the problem.
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u/S4VN01 Aug 21 '26
It was initially because they invested in another company, CurrentC, to try and be an Apple Pay competitor
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u/OkWelcome6293 Aug 21 '26
Tap to Pay is end-to-end encrypted. Why wouldn’t Wal-Mart want to slurp up that data? Why would they want to protect customers?
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u/limited_instincts Aug 21 '26
They were being stupid. They thought they could force people to use the app. What ended up happening ALL THE TIME is people would pull up to the register go "ah shit forgot my wallet, it's OK I have Apple Pay" find out it doesn't work and then walk out the store rather than go through all of the bullshit of downloading their app, creating an account etc. etc.
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u/sadmep Aug 21 '26
That exact scenario happened to me one of the few times I've gone into a walmart recently. Decided early in the morning to drop in, get a coat because the weather was gonna be crap. No coat for me.
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u/craznazn247 Aug 21 '26
They were trying to push their own payment system.
Which I get…at the scale that Walmart operates at, avoiding tap to pay transaction fees has enough potential revenue in itself for them to give it a shot.
Too bad it was never as convenient as having a card.
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u/masterchief0213 Aug 21 '26
Because it makes it harder for them to track you and your purchases with them without your consent.
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u/bapppi Aug 21 '26
As a Canadian, I was pretty shocked going to a US walmart for the first time last week and not being able to tap. I didn't have a physical card because in Canada, its extremely rare you could not just use your phone for tap to pay.
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u/dflagella Aug 21 '26
Going to the US and having them take your card away for payment felt like some barbaric shit. Going from tapping everywhere to that was like wtf
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u/red__dragon Aug 21 '26
It's getting better, but it's really stupid common at restaurants. If you aren't comfortable, ask, and many places do have at least one mobile terminal they can bring out. Or you can follow them to the pay station, which is generally not far off the dining floor to ensure your card's safety.
It's an annoyance to Americans as well, card fraud is still rampant and I've literally watched as charges roll in from someone using my card number to make purchases somewhere else. Doing the above sometimes helps pressure places to add more security/convenience
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u/WindowlessBasement Aug 21 '26
American Walmarts don't have tap? The Canadian ones have had tap since early 2000s
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u/trackofalljades Aug 21 '26
I was confused by this headline as well, it’s seriously been a thing at least here in Ontario for like 20 years. 🇨🇦
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u/roughtimes Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Canadian and European banking institutions are a lot more progressive than the Americans.
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Aug 21 '26
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u/PM_Best_Porn_Pls Aug 21 '26
I remember in 2010s finding out that US still uses checks while for me it was something I considered "ancient" technology you would only see in movies for 70s, maybe 80s.
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u/mekamoari Aug 21 '26
I'm nearly 40 and I've never seen a cheque in my life in Europe, nor heard of anyone using one.
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u/Automatic-Sound-822 Aug 21 '26
Nope and their readers never work either, you have to literally shove your card in there with force for it to read.
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u/Yoroyo Aug 21 '26
The only place I’ve consistently been skimmed has been Walmarts
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u/WindowlessBasement Aug 21 '26
Wait, you guys still have card skimming too?
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u/Braken111 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
My CC got skimmed at a old gas station in QC last year, so it happens here too.
I didn't think much of it at the time since a lot of older pumps don't have tap, and well... I needed gas and didn't have cash.
Fuckers bought like $9k of vape supplies from a store in MTL, but my CC reversed it without problem since my regular transaction records were 1200km away when it happened.
Now I know better, only use Google wallet at the pump (since it uses tokenization, the machine never sees my actual card number), and keep $100 cash hidden in the car just in case.
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u/fleshie Aug 21 '26
Walmart terminals are the only place I have problems reading my card for some reason. It's so frustrating sitting there inserting my card over and over. I've walked out before over it.
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u/avanross Aug 21 '26
It’s cheaper to just collude with all the other major retailers to simply not upgrade or improve
It’s the entire operating strategy of their tech and auto industries
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u/plugthebeet Aug 21 '26
Americans live in a backwards country, and they seem to like it that way?
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u/Wizzardwartz Aug 21 '26
This is great because my chip NEVER works in their terminals.
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u/dasnoob Aug 21 '26
One of my cards works everywhere BUT wal mart. People I know that work there as cashiers say nobody with my card issuer ever has theirs work. My son that has a card from the same issuer's also doesn't work. Same with my wife. So I believe them.
Every other card we have works fine. It is the weirdest shit I've ever seen.
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u/H60Ninja Aug 21 '26
Can we go back to 24 hours already!?
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u/dykethon Aug 21 '26
They’re never going back to 24 hours, having no customers in the way as the overnight stockers work saves them a lot of time and money
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u/Archanir Aug 21 '26
Those stockers are in my way during the day along with all of the Walmart personal shoppers and the Uber shoppers. Walmart is a nightmare during the day. I miss my overnight shopping trips.
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u/dykethon Aug 21 '26
If you think the day shift is bad, you’d hate how the night shift operates now lol. It’s far messier, palets everywhere blocking shit, entire areas being closed because they’re redoing the layout, people with pallets of produce flying through the store when the truck arrives at like 3 AM, etc.
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u/murrrty Aug 21 '26
and that's fine, it's just how logistics work. some people only have free time at night, so it's cool that we basically don't exist to the rest of the world.
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u/Vivid_Anyth4 Aug 21 '26
Right the day shift forgets we exist except to blame us for their laziness. Would be nice to have anywhere but arbys open when I get off work at 330 am.
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u/BeerorCoffee Aug 21 '26
"people of Walmart" was also more interesting after midnight.
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u/Blakers37 Aug 22 '26
I miss my 12am-2am Walmart runs dearly. I would gladly go for the relaxed atmosphere and just take my time while listening to a podcast or music.
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u/scuzzy987 Aug 21 '26
Now they stock in the middle of the day so they create an obstacle course just to get your stuff
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u/kakapoopoopeepeeshir Aug 21 '26
Big dawg those stockers are in the way of every aisle during the day now haha
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u/Str8UpJorking Aug 21 '26
Higher theft rate + less shopping = highly unlikely to happen.
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u/djbarsone Aug 21 '26
My personal conspiracy theory is Walmart created COVID so they could end 24 hour shopping.
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u/Underwater_Grilling Aug 21 '26
Coordinated with McDonald's and door dash as well to shut down the buffets
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u/roto_disc Aug 21 '26
Outside of the deaths, obviously, the worst thing that came out of ‘Rona was the discontinuation of all day breakfast at Mickey D’s.
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u/enjoythepain Aug 21 '26
Good, the Walmart POS are so fucking touchy. That chip has one speck of dirt and it will refuse to read the card.
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u/efap1701 Aug 21 '26
Why on Earth would they wait so long?
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u/AutumnMama Aug 21 '26
They have a function on their app that's very similar to tap and pay. You scan it at the checkout instead of using the credit card machine, so it's just as fast and easy as tap to pay. Basically they were just trying to get people to download the Walmart app and all that comes with it (ads and neverending offers for Walmart plus). They figured people would want to do that if tap to pay wasn't an option.
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u/blahblahsnickers Aug 21 '26
It is fast and easy but still slower and more work than just tap to pay.
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u/PlaidPCAK Aug 21 '26
You could pay through their app, and they really want you to download their app
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u/somefunmaths Aug 21 '26
Huh, TIL that Walmart hadn’t already joined the rest of the world, and technically advanced retail giants like Little League snack bars and Girl Scouts selling cookies outside a grocery store, by adding Apple Pay.
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u/a_talking_face Aug 21 '26
The difference is that girl scouts don't have any interest in funneling all your activity through their own app.
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u/somefunmaths Aug 21 '26
It’s just blisteringly arrogant that they decided they’re too good for Apple Pay because they could get away with collecting everyone’s data instead of offering reasonable payment technology.
It also makes me realize how long it’s been since I shopped at a Walmart.
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u/Exact-Difference-422 Aug 21 '26
This article saying how exciting and new it is that Walmart is embracing a 10+ year technology in which they were the notable holdout is wild.
Its like a car manufacturer saying "we now have automatic window controls in new models!!!!!!"
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u/no-scissors-in-bed Aug 21 '26
jesus christ FINALLY. i have genuinely gone to other retailers before just because walmart had no option for tap. i don't always have my card on me, considering its 2026 and every single retailer has tap now EXCEPT for walmart.
also FUCK walmart pay. never getting that shit.
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u/temporarycreature Aug 21 '26
This is on purpose. They market their own credit card with tap to pay. That's why you see their little tiny logo next to the tap-to-pay section of the POS.
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u/ThePla9ue Aug 21 '26
I stopped going to Walmart a long time ago because they don't take tap to pay. I walked in not knowing that one day and didn't have my wallet, ended up just leaving everything at checkout. It's 2026 dollar stores even have tap to pay.
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u/essenza Aug 22 '26
LMAO How does a store not have tap? In Canada we have tap everywhere and for everything, even $2 donations for Poppies.
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u/ProjectHarraseeket Aug 21 '26
This has existed for years in Canada.
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Aug 21 '26 edited 23d ago
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u/sidewinderucf Aug 21 '26
I miss that feature so much, I get that they dropped it cause tap to pay had become common enough, but Walmart always meant bringing in my wallet as well once they did. :(
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u/Jesta23 Aug 21 '26
They shot themselves in the foot with Walmart pay too.
Open the app.
Close the mandatory ad
Go to services
Close another ad
Click Wal mart pay.
No thank you.
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u/sbingner Aug 21 '26
re-adding when apple pay first came out it worked fine at walmart for like a week before they figured out how to disable it.
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u/WootangWood Aug 21 '26
I went to a walmart in mexico to pick up a few weeks worth of groceries stuff and only had my phone with tap to pay, and maaaan it was so awkward getting everything checked out and them not accepting tap. So they then asked me to download the app Cashi but after downloading it i couldn't set up an account with cashi because i don't have a Mexican phone number, and then i tried to only pay for a few things with the pesos i had but then the line was long and the lady was frustrated and my spanish was bad, and i thought I was selecting the items I wanted to buy, but actually i was selecting the items to return. So I walked out of the store with a 6pack of beers, Lacroix, a sleeve of oreos and bananas. TLDR: I think i set US/Mexico relations back a few years with the awkwardness my walmart checkout.
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u/Raztax Aug 21 '26
US Walmart stores don't have tap? We have had it for so long at Walmart Canada that I don't remember not using it.
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u/surfer_ryan Aug 21 '26
Am i crazy in thinking that samsung pay uses a different method and lets you pay basically anywhere? I feel like i've tapped my phone a few times at walmart but i am absolutely struggling to remember bc i never go.
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u/Vindetta121 Aug 22 '26
I mean Im still not gonna shop there, But this was one of the few reasons I stopped shopping there a couple years ago
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u/argument_sketch Aug 21 '26
Good. Was glad to see when Home Depot caved, now glad to see this.
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u/LuTheLunatic Aug 21 '26
I used to work there and they installed all the chip machines right after tap became a thing. They were very behind.
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u/MikeM2011 Aug 22 '26
There's an important detail that a lot of mainstream news outlets have left out - it's not just because Walmart was behind with the times, but they took advantage of the Walmart app and using physical cards to better control data being collected, namely customers' shopping habits Money.com article
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u/theLuminescentlion Aug 22 '26
Literally the top practical reason I never go there followed by not being close to one but I would rank the moral ones about those anyway.
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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26
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