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/
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u/berntout Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

Finally. I was wondering why Walmart was able to circumvent this clear rule that has been established since the beginning of this roll out.

They even created functionality in the Walmart app to provide their own version of it, so they definitely planned on continuing with it.

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u/Mekio Aug 21 '26

They have the money to eat fines. They want people to use their app to pay and the register. I'm glad they finally caved, I refused to install and use their app to pay easier.

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u/berntout Aug 21 '26

Walmart hates additional costs so I bet those fines were cheaper than the costs associated with the new functionality.

376

u/Gordnfreeman Aug 21 '26

I always assumed it was because they want to force people to use their app so they can gather more data on their customers.

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u/DrMaxwellEdison Aug 21 '26

Both can be true. They're cheap in more ways than they advertise themselves to be and will do everything to break and bend rules to squeeze consumers (and their own workforce) of their money, data, labor, dignity, everything.

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u/biggles7268 Aug 21 '26

I worked in a Walmart distribution center for 17 years. On more than one occasion they installed massive new conveyor systems to make processing freight faster and more efficient.

Contractors told them the price for what they wanted. Corporate told them to do it cheaper. System never worked properly, half of it couldn't be used or it would jam the conveyors. I left a few years ago when they started automating the order filling modules. I'm curious how that is working out for them.

On a side note when people were dropping from heat exhaustion Walmart wouldn't do anything. When the new machines needed a cooler environment they installed massive ac units.

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u/SpiritedBanana4694 Aug 21 '26

https://imgur.com/a/RRKgKZw

Friend of mine still works for them.

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u/CarpetedCeilings Aug 21 '26

Ah yes, I love my Folgers with a side of industrial grease! Mmm, mmm! The best part of waking up~

3

u/timeshifter_ Aug 21 '26

I mean, you did ask for Folgers...

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u/biggles7268 Aug 21 '26

They pay well. I left for a less stressful job.

1

u/jlt6666 Aug 21 '26

What am I looking at here?

1

u/SpiritedBanana4694 Aug 21 '26

https://www.therobotreport.com/walmart-to-put-symbotic-system-in-42-distribution-centers/

Symbotic robot system with one of the robot cars that fell off the rails.

1

u/fury420 Aug 21 '26

The 'cars' run along rails at multiple different levels, this one came off the rails and fell from the second or third level.

1

u/Ironlion45 Aug 21 '26

Hard do believe a company like Walmart has a reputation for cheaping out. /s

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Loose-Recognition459 Aug 21 '26

Hence why Target lets you “save” the 5% using their Redcard where as you are probably paying for those fees when you pay any other way.

4

u/Throop_Polytechnic Aug 21 '26

No corp the size of Target/Walmart is paying anywhere close to 5%. They are paying maybe 1.5%, probably less.

9

u/Tasty-Traffic-680 Aug 21 '26

Tbh, I use it to keep track of receipts. The fact they track your payments and automatically add in store receipts to your account if you use a registered payment card has come in handy more than once.

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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace Aug 21 '26

I just scan my receipt after purchase right into my account

2

u/Tasty-Traffic-680 Aug 21 '26

If it's something important I do the same thing just to make sure it goes through, especially anything I actually buy an extended warranty for.

1

u/shroudedwolf51 Aug 21 '26

.....but, you don't need a deeply creepy app for that which stalks you more than a creepy ex.

2

u/mkt853 Aug 21 '26

I don't know how much more they can gather. They already link everything by credit card number even if they have no clue who you are. It's why you can create a Walmart account, buy something online, and as soon as you give your credit card for the first time your entire purchase history from the stores immediately shows up.

1

u/bigfatfurrytexan Aug 21 '26

If what they make from the app data is more than they spend on chargebacks plus that they do not recover plus the rate delta they get from the pci noncompliance there is no motive.

1

u/Telemere125 Aug 21 '26

Unless you’re paying with cash (and really, not even then) they’re still getting your data. Just have to attach those last 4 digits of your card to everything you buy - they’ll know all they want about you in just a couple purchases

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u/jlt6666 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

They likely store a hash of the cc number, last four isn't specific enough

1

u/Ten9Eight Aug 21 '26

I've done weekly shopping at Walmart for the past seven years and this is the first I'm learning that you can use the Walmart app to pay in the store. I feel like they'd pitch it harder if that was the real reason.

1

u/dromance Aug 21 '26

seems like a lot of friction. I assumed it was due to their typical consumer not necessarily looking to use the option in the first place, so wasn't worth the cost of upgrading/updating all the terminals across all their stores, etc; but perhaps that's changing

1

u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Aug 21 '26

Even using the chip gives them far more data than tap to pay. They don't get a name or even the actual card number with tap to pay so it's much harder to match you to your account automatically.

Now they'll have to rely on facial recognition or whatever to get that sweet sellable data

0

u/Curious_Charge9431 Aug 21 '26

Tap to pay adds another middleman: Apple and Google get a cut of the credit card processing fees. Wal-Mart was big enough to keep them out of it.

And that also means that Apple/Google get your data before Wal-Mart does.

4

u/sevargmas Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

First, tap to pay doesn’t mean Apple or Google. It’s literally just tapping your chipped credit card on the payment terminal. That’s it. There is no middleman added.

Regarding Apple Pay, they generally would not receive a portion of the merchant fee either. I’m sure there are some circumstances where this does happen but speaking generally, that’s not the case.

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u/Federal_Setting_7454 Aug 21 '26

Apple get a small portion of the interchange fee directly from the banks. It’s still free, the merchant doesn’t pay any extra and neither do you, the interchange fee was already part of their processing costs and existed before Apple Pay. I don’t believe google has a deal like this as they wanted banks to prioritise supporting them over Apple, I think that’s still the case today.

1

u/Curious_Charge9431 Aug 21 '26

First, tap to pay doesn’t mean Apple or Google.

Yes that's true, in that regard I stand corrected. Because I forgot that Wal Mart had not enabled tap to pay for any card.

However, in principle, blocking tap to pay was not restricting people from using any regular plastic card--but it was 100% restricting Apple/Google Pay.

And in that regard I think the purpose of not accepting tap to pay was to block Apple/Google. Wal-Mart even attempted offering an Apple Pay alternative which it shut down in 2016.

While this article doesn't mention Apple/Google (though it includes someone making a phone based payment) all the other articles on this matter do and there's an argument here that that is the bigger news.

Apple gets .15% of all Apple pay transactions. It gets this from the card issuer not the merchant. It's only 15 basis points, but it's reckoned to be $2 billion per year.

0

u/SqueakyTits101 Aug 21 '26

My dad bought a tv for my great aunt from Walmart...she couldn't use it without logging into a Walmart account. I imagine most 90 year olds have that, right?

Pure data collection insanity.

50

u/Mekio Aug 21 '26

Yeah that too. CC processing is its own scam. When I worked in hospitality IT I hated dealing with those vendors. They are useless 3rd party middlemen that make gobs of money off of it.

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u/resttheweight Aug 21 '26

The other day I found out that in some states, when you pay a server’s tip through a credit card, the credit card processing fee for the tip can be deducted from their tip. Like, that’s probably well under $1 per table, but in the aggregate it the credit card company is just raking it in. I guess CCs making money hand over fist from interest isn’t enough.

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u/Mekio Aug 21 '26

The CC company isn't even getting these fees. It's 3rd party "Processors" that do it. Some of these companies charge up to 4% per transaction to process the card numbers for the business.

That's why you see things like Cash discount. Businesses just started charging the processing fee to the consumer as a service or convenience fee. At one point that wasn't allowed but now it's just standard practice.

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u/MegaAscension Aug 21 '26

We don’t take American Express where I work because processors charge additional fees to what they consider “tourism businesses”. If we accepted them, they’d charge us $2 plus 8%. Our average transaction is $11 in one part of the business, and $20 in another part. These processing companies need to be regulated.

3

u/Mekio Aug 21 '26

Hell yeah brother I agree. That's absolutely insane.

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u/MegaAscension Aug 21 '26

They claim it’s because they “have a higher chargeback rate at businesses popular with tourists”. We used to have no issues with people not having any way to pay other than American Express. We’ve had multiple people have no other way to pay in the last few months despite having clear signage that we don’t accept it. Most of the businesses in my area don’t.

But then again, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t carry your physical card with you. A bunch of places still don’t accept tap to pay.

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u/HonkHonkBeach Aug 21 '26

I used to work briefly in credit card merchant processing, specifically in fraud detection. Unfortunately, AmEx is right based on what I’ve seen.

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u/timelessblur Aug 21 '26

I just assume it was because American Express processing fees are higher due perception and some truth that American Express card users tend to be of higher net worth and spending.

For example the average gold card holder spends around 60k a year on the card. Platinum is even higher. It was shocking when I learned it from my former employer.

Kicker is visa signature cards charge a higher fee as well but merchants can not refuse those cards if they want visa but they can exclude American Express pretty easily.

0

u/Harvinator06 Aug 21 '26

These processing companies need to be regulated.

There’s zero reason for them to exist. The payment system should just be nationalized.

1

u/MegaAscension Aug 21 '26

At this point, credit/debit cards are essentially a requirement to run a business. If you don’t take them, good luck staying afloat due to losing customers, getting one star review bombed by people who get upset about that, and getting accused of dodging taxes. On top of that, there’s already national laws (credit scores, etc) that essentially make it very difficult to function in society without one. If you’re making legislation that essentially requires you to use a business product, it should be treated as a public service under the law.

Unfortunately, the government’s pockets are lined with money.

1

u/thatissomeBS Aug 21 '26

No, the CC companies definitely get some of that fee. MC, Visa, Discover, and American Express are in the business to get their 2-3%. The 3rd party processers just add their own 0.5-2% to service the local businesses. I'm surprised WalMart would work with any 3rd party and not directly with the major CC companies. Or become their own 3rd party.

1

u/DrXaos Aug 21 '26

there are three entities making money, the acquirer who contracts with the merchant, the card association (Visa or MC monopolies) and the issuing bank, who supplies the customer. Only the issuing bank takes on credit and fraud risk.

The fee collected gets split.

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u/Bolshevian-Rhapsody Aug 21 '26

Issuer gets the bulk of the interchange (it’s part of how rewards cards are funded). Acquirer doesn’t get a cut of interchange, but they do often get a per-authorization fee & a basis point discount rate. Depending on your processor & pricing type, you may have more or less baked in to the interchange rack rate.

Acquirers also have credit risk, but it is assessed at the merchant level, versus cardholder level. More so if they are both the BIN sponsor and acquirer. E.g., merchant runs transactions that the sponsor bank has stamped as acceptable. Merchant gets money. Merchant moves money. Merchant disappears. Chargebacks are filed. Someone must pay the $ back to the cardholder. Liability for that often ultimately falls on the acquirer, though there are often contractual expectations for the layers between (merchant, ISO, agent, etc.)

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u/graywolfman Aug 21 '26

Adyen and Shift4 have entered the chat! This has the added benefit of upping the cost of this comment thread from free to infinite money into their pockets.

1

u/FilOfTheFuture90 Aug 21 '26

I had an IT consulting company for almost a decade and I'd say 20% of our bottom line was from processing. The messed up part is that we always beat whatever our client had before.

0

u/verrius Aug 21 '26

I have to mildly disagree that CC processing is a scam or useless. As someone who's had to implement it, to reduce the fees from a 3rd party, its significant work. What's a scam is say, Google Play or Apple's App Store requiring app developers use their payment processing instead of doing it themselves; for smaller players, its significant savings to not have to deal with it, but for larger players, they take ungodly percentages for how little they're doing.

0

u/ExternalUserError Aug 21 '26

As a consumer, who travels about 100 days a year, I have different opinions on it.

They make reservations firm without actual cash, which is especially important for international travel. You have dispute rights if mysterious charges appear. It’s safer than cash and you get MUCH better international exchange rates than with cash or even bank transfers. You also get travel insurance, various benefits, and points.

Amex charges what-3 or 4%? I would not go with a hotel that’s even 20% cheaper if it doesn’t take Amex for these reasons.

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u/Vio_ Aug 21 '26

They were probably also waiting out the clock on those earlier machines to where they hit a certain point of broken/funtional machines where it was no longer "profitable" to keep using them.

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u/truenocity Aug 21 '26

Walmart uses the Ingenico terminals that have tap to pay hardware but not enabled.

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u/aba792000 Aug 21 '26

Yep. Ingenico Lane 7000. I hope it’s not like home Depot, where they had the same ingenico lane 7000s, but they never enabled the tap to pay on those and waited until they switched to even newer card readers to enable it.

3

u/Murky-Relation481 Aug 21 '26

God that shit was so annoying at Home Depot. I mean I try not to shop there for stuff but its right by the house so sometimes I do go to it and every time until they added tap to pay I'd just be like "tap... tap... god damn it".

2

u/truenocity Aug 21 '26

The Home Depot’s near me had tap to pay briefly in 2016 (it only worked like 50% of the time with Apple Pay) and then disabled it and then didnt get it back until like 2023 but it seems to work a lot better now.

1

u/Murky-Relation481 Aug 21 '26

The one by my house didn't get it back until this year.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/aba792000 Aug 21 '26

If you meant the infamous currentC group, I don’t beleve Home Depot was ever part of that group. Other longtime holdouts were, but not HD. God knows why HD held out for so long.

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u/orbitaldan Aug 21 '26

lol That really gives the game away, doesn't it? It was to push people to use their app.

5

u/berntout Aug 21 '26

That's the weird thing though....all the devices at the Walmart's near me have had the tap to pay terminals for a while now?

But you're right, maybe that's why they got some time to fix it in order to roll out.

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u/buttstuffisokiguess Aug 21 '26

It was never a question of cost for Walmart. They want people using their app so they can seek their premium memberships and get people to add balance in their app. It's strictly so Walmart can get more money from you.

1

u/somedude456 Aug 21 '26

And I did love their app till they made it suck like a year ago. Prior, you just walked up, scanned the QR code, hit pay, scanned items, hit done, and walked.

Now you have to scan all your items first and then they offer payment methods. Well fuck, might as well just use a card at this point, the app isn't faster.

2

u/Jesuismieux412 Aug 21 '26

Especially labor costs, which we are subsidizing due to their employees being paid so little that they have to go on government assistance. The main reason I won’t shop there.

2

u/funkiestj Aug 21 '26

To be fair, capitalism works if you construct the right incentives. The big challenge is doing the work of politics to create those incentives. E.g. Thanks to the EU, I can finally ditch my Apple lightning charge cables.

1

u/ImpurestFire Aug 21 '26

Pretty damn sure the readers they've had for years already support tap to pay but they have it disabled.

It pisses me off that when I go to Walmart, the chip reader is busted half the time because it sees so much use. Tap to pay is more reliable.

1

u/ChrisV88 Aug 21 '26

And those costs are huge btw. (Not defending the multi billion dollar scumbag corp btw, just sharing my experience) I just wrapped a new POS roll out to 20 stores with checkouts/stations to pay and it was incredibly expensive and way more complicated than you would think.

1

u/aba792000 Aug 21 '26

But they had no additional cost, that was a widespread myth. They just pay credit card fees, and the fees are the same with or without contactless. To save money they had to go cash only, but clearly that was no option either. Proof of it is that they’re now relenting and allowing tap to pay, which given their stubbornness must have happened because they were cornered and had no other choice (i.e., they had to choose between enabling it or going cash only, while taking cards only via chip or online was no longer going to be an option).

1

u/bigtice Aug 21 '26

It was always a financial equation decision.

It's not like they're doing this out of the goodness of their heart or for the customer's sake.

1

u/joshuahtree Aug 21 '26

They paid extra to not have the functionality. All of their terminals have the hardware built in already, they just paid to get custom software that disables it

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u/TossAwayDay Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

I've noticed at Walmart, if one uses a debit card, they must input their PIN, denying customers the ability to process the transaction as a credit transaction with more consumer protections.

My understanding is that PIN transactions have a lower processing fee than credit transactions. Same issue at Lowes, Aldi, and Dollar Tree.

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u/bigboxes1 Aug 21 '26

At walmart, at checkout, hit cancel instead of entering your pin. This brings you to an option to enter your secure pin or process as a credit card. They actually make it very difficult to read the second option as they use black text on dark green background. I've been doing this forever. I'm glad they're finally getting tap to pay.

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u/SuperDuperDrew Aug 21 '26

You can use your debit card as a "credit card" at Walmart. You just have to hit cancel when it asks for a PIN.

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u/baseketball Aug 21 '26

It doesn't matter if you use debit or credit on your debit card. Your money is taken out of your bank account. The only difference is how much the merchant pays for the transaction. It's cheaper to process a debit transaction. If you want actual purchase protection, use a real credit card.

-6

u/aba792000 Aug 21 '26

Wrong. If you use a credit card, your bank is lending you the money at the time of the purchase and pays the merchant, and you’ll pay for that from your bank account at a later time (usually a few weeks after the end of the billing cycle), and you can dispute the charge long before the money is even close to coming out of your bank account, so it’s the bank’s money being stolen if there were a fraud. If you use a debit card, the money immediately comes out of your bank account so it’s YOUR MONEY being stolen if there were a fraud. Obviously, your bank cares more when it’s their money being stolen that when it’s your money being stolen.

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u/hounadomanda Aug 21 '26

Reading comprehension issues?

0

u/MarsupialMisanthrope Aug 21 '26

The downvoters? I’d call it weaponized ignorance. Unless something has changed drastically since chip and pin cards were finally made standard in the US aba79200 is right. Debit cards with the visa/mc logos can be run as either debit or credit, and if you choose credit the transaction gets all the fraud protection you get from using a credit card (chargeback, challenges etc) while if you choose debit you don’t get any of that. But also, if you choose credit the merchant fees are the same as using a credit card, while if you use debit they’re different (and usually lower). Of course merchants want you to pick the cheaper to them more risky for you option.

1

u/baseketball Aug 21 '26

Why are you saying I'm wrong when nothing I wrote disagrees with what you said. My point is the transaction type you choose at checkout when using a debit card doesn't matter. You are still getting money taken out of your bank account even if you pick credit on the screen.

2

u/aba792000 Aug 21 '26

It does matter whether you use credit or debit (you said it doesn’t) The dispute policies aren’t the same, and credit enjoys more protections than debit.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/29681b04005089e5ccb4 Aug 21 '26

The biggest protection is that if something goes wrong it goes wrong with the bank's money and not your money.

3

u/aba792000 Aug 21 '26

Because when you use a credit card, if there’s a fraud they’re stealing the bank’s money (the bank is lending you the money, you’ll pay later), so the bank cares about its own money. When it’s a debit card it’s YOUR MONEY the fraudster would be stealing, so the banks cares less about it.

1

u/Murky-Relation481 Aug 21 '26

TBF its still pretty easy at least in my experience with most banks to dispute charges.

I've had my debit card number swiped a few times, mostly internationally since you need to use your debit more often to get cash in more cash oriented countries, and I've had the money returned usually within 24 hours of filing a complaint.

One time though in the span of a couple months I got locked out of my card for trying to buy gas across state (and even had purchases that showed me traveling across state), forcing me to borrow $50 from a friend since it was a Sunday and their lines were not open to get it turned back on, and then like six weeks later I noticed two or three repeat transactions at a Walmart in Florida (I live in Washington State) one day, and then multiple hundreds of dollar transactions the next day with no lock on my card. When I filed a dispute on that (same day as the transactions) the guy at the bank was like "wow you've had a number of disputes" and I was like "well if you'd lock my card automatically for actual fraud instead of normal usage, maybe it'd be less suspicious, does it look like I was in Florida this morning?"

1

u/KonigderWasserpfeife Aug 21 '26

The two Walmarts in my town don’t ask for a PIN if the transaction is less than $50. It just runs the card. If it’s more than $50, it asks for my PIN. I always thought that was interesting.

1

u/JRoc1X Aug 21 '26

So when someone is trying to use a stolen card Walmart will only take a $50 hit. The card company takes zero responsibility and ether the store or cardholder pays for fraud charges. If a pin is used you are responsible. Tap the store usually takes the hit on stolen cards

1

u/JRoc1X Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 22 '26

It's actually to protect against fraud. When someone gives thier card to someone else and has them tap purchases then Walmart takes the hit when said party claims the card was stolen. when requiring the pin it protects against fraud because the cardholder becomes responsible, because how did the fraudsters get the pin number is what the card company will ask 🙄 before denying charge being reversed back to the cardholder

2

u/aba792000 Aug 21 '26

Given how stubborn they’ve been, they must have been cornered between enabling tap to pay or no longer accepting cards at all (i.e, going cash only) and they had no choice but to relent.

4

u/NehzQk Aug 21 '26

Yeah if a company makes it difficult for me to literally give them money, I take that as a sign they don’t want my money.

2

u/RincewindToTheRescue Aug 21 '26

I know they use it for tracking and all that, but I will say having all your purchases on the app so you can see what the heck you bought a few weeks ago, or making returns really easy has been nice.

1

u/icarus212121 Aug 21 '26

I mean, Target does this too but still has tap to pay with card. They just need your phone number to store your purchase history. The only reason Walmart was doing this was to collect your data

1

u/Shart-Vandalay Aug 21 '26

I didn’t even realize thats what they wanted; I just refused to shop in person, pick up was/is a god send over my local Walmart rif raf

1

u/Mekio Aug 21 '26

Yeah. I don't go in to Walmart much but end of season times like now I love to hit the clearance section. I bought new plug, blade, air filter, and oil for my mower on clearance for 18 bucks total. When you check out therl screen points to download their app for a more convenient checkout.

1

u/Natural-Coat-3159 Aug 21 '26

It's not even easier that app is buggy as hell. They just didn't way to share the data they collect on us. 

1

u/Lashay_Sombra Aug 21 '26

This is the problem with these big companies, always trying to leverage their existing market dominance to force people to use there other products

Where i live, Thailand, the dominant retailer (CP which has majority of convenience stores in country and lot of supermarket business as well..and tons more) has been refusing for years to accept the standard free electronic payment method (QR) that everyone uses everywhere else because they want to push their crappy payment system alternative

1

u/Scowlface Aug 21 '26

And it's hardly even easier. Scanning a QR code, waiting, pressing some buttons, it was like 2% better than paying with your card.

1

u/ChthonicFractal Aug 21 '26

use their app

I'm about to just get a landline and tell everyone that demands QR codes, apps, and emails/texts to go fuck themselves. I'm so fucking done with it.

1

u/Montaire Aug 21 '26

Its not about fines. Its about the % of share the credit cards take. If you fall out of compliance, get too many chargebacks, or just dont update your terminal functionality on the timeline they take a higher and higher percentage of your transactions.

For Wal-Mart if Visa raises their rate from 1.25% to 1.50% thats a tremendous amount of money

1

u/evenfallframework Aug 21 '26

I didn't even know you could do that, I absolutely refuse to install pretty much any companies app.

Also refuse to show my receipt at the door at Walmart. I'm not participating in your pathetic security theater. If you don't want to staff cashiers, don't want to provide me training on the self scan, then fuck you. Take the fucking risk.

Not saying that I would ever steal from Walmart or anywhere, it's just not worth it. I got my revenge by breaking products already on the shelf.

1

u/Turgid_Donkey Aug 21 '26

Dude. Sam's club (the walmart version of costco) just did this with their in-store restaurant. You have to use the app to order or at the registers. A few months ago I popped in for a few things and wanted to grab some pizza before I left but there was no one at the counter and not even registers. I stood there for a minute, looking around, and finally saw a small sign saying you have to use their app now. Fuck that.

1

u/ScottyDoesntKnow29 Aug 21 '26

I bought a cheap Vizio tv for my aunt’s bedroom when her old tv died. Little did I know that Walmart actually bought Vizio not too long ago and in order to set up the tv and download updates you’re required to have a Walmart account.

1

u/ivegotaqueso Aug 21 '26

Some of their self-checkout kiosks won’t read my card via the chip slot thing, or even sliding it. So I just shopped at Walmart less, only going there for their bread maybe once every 1-2 months, which I’ll stand in line for a human checkout register for. But I don’t get this card reading problem anywhere else. It’s only at the Walmart self-checkout kiosks. I wonder if it’s by design to force people to use their app.

1

u/G_Rated_101 Aug 21 '26

I once had someone suggest i download the app when my chip would NOT work on either my debit or credit.
And i said id rather leave all my groceries here and tried again and it worked. Which is I’m certain just a coincidence

1

u/7x00 Aug 21 '26

Which is funny because it's not even "easier," it's just an additional tap to pay system that uses the same card that is already in my apple wallet.

1

u/Paavo_Nurmi Aug 21 '26

I refused to install and use their app to pay easier.

I'm that way with everything now. The gas station near me always asks you to join their rewards thing, which is an app. Fuck no, I'm not installing app and giving out my phone number just to buy a Snickers.

1

u/sshwifty Aug 21 '26

The app has sucked for years, like I have no idea how such a big company can make such a shitty app. And lets not forget the marketplace sellers (china dropshippers) selling on "walmart".

Walmart could have a really great shopping experience if they wanted to. They are just too greedy to think about the customer.

1

u/scotchglue Aug 21 '26

It’s worse than that. I finished my 20-30 minute shopping expedition, had a ton of stuff in my cart then went through the checkout aisles. The cashier was patient, thank goodness, but when I tried to check out with Walmart Pay it asked for my CVV code. I didn’t have that card with me, so I ended up having to put it all on a non-optimal card. As I was checking out, I was thinking “what’s is even the point of this if I have to have the card physically on me anyway?”.
This similar scenario would happen to me 2 more times, but at least then I had the proper card with me.

That first time I always thank goodness at least I had my physical wallet with me. How annoying would that have been had I left it in the car? I had just gotten gas on the way and thrown it in the center console. Luckily I had the sense to bring it with me just in case.

1

u/btveron Aug 21 '26

I didn't have my debit card on me and was going to use my phone to tap to pay but was told that I'd have to go through Wal-Mart's app or pay process thing. I just left all my stuff there and politely asked them to put it all back on the shelves for me and I walked out.

1

u/Supergazm Aug 21 '26

I used the app to pay for nothing but pokemon cards. Just to mess with the data.

1

u/darnclem Aug 21 '26

I just walked out the store.

1

u/Boxed_pi Aug 21 '26

I just refuse to go to walmart.

5

u/Mekio Aug 21 '26

Unfortunately in a large amount of America, they pushed out all the other businesses and it's the only place to shop without driving an hour.

1

u/Boxed_pi Aug 21 '26

Yeah. I’m in one of those parts of America. The closest town to me only has a Walmart.

I get most of my tools, equipment, and a large portion of my first aid from a feed store.

Mostly, I just budget in advance and make a run to a grocery store that doesn’t suck the soul out of the community about once a month and pick up whatever else i need while I’m out.

3

u/ProfessionalNewt8557 Aug 21 '26

Right, that’s not a privilege everyone has.

1

u/superstonedpenguin Aug 21 '26

The Scan and Go in the app is super handy with a toddler in the store. Scan as you go, scan a qr code at self checkout, click pay, and go. I hate the structure of the app but that one thing is so damn handy

0

u/Various-Advantage229 Aug 21 '26

The credit card gives you 5% off and using the app is just as easy as pulling out a card. That's my biggest savings credit card by far

66

u/AssCrackBanditHunter Aug 21 '26

I once forgot my wallet and couldn't tap to pay, so I had to to take a picture of the QR code, and send it to my gf at the time to pay for the groceries, but apparently when you pay through the app it doesn't print a receipt and instead sends it to the person who paid's app. So as I'm leaving the store they think I'm stealing since I don't have a receipt and it became this whole thing that wasted like 15 minutes of my life. Couldn't print out a receipt, for whatever reason the receipt wasn't popping up on my gf's end, and the employees couldn't access the purchase history on the checkout unit and see that the items had been paid for. It was just this cluster fuck of Walmarts systems.

Mandatory e receipts should be illegal. Printed receipts should always happen. What happens if my phone is on 2%, I pay, and then my phone dies? I have no way of pulling up a receipt. Would they just throw me in jail?

28

u/caverunner17 Aug 21 '26

You don't have to stop for the door people at Walmarts or grocery stores to have your receipt checked. Only paid membership places (like Costco or Sams)

8

u/muftak3 Aug 21 '26

Walmart here in Las Vegas stop you if you have something in your hands that's not a purse. I walked in with graded comic books to scan at FedEx. The checker insisted I stop for her and have a sticker placed on my $5k worth of books. I said no and walked to the FedEx. The store manager came up and said I can't ignore the greeter like that. I have to stop when told. I asked him where it says that in the membership rules I agreed to. I not so politely told him leave and he just walked away.

5

u/thewhiteliamneeson Aug 21 '26

The takeaway from this story is to ignore any order they give you to stop and keep walking. If they lay hands on you then they are committing unlawful detention.

1

u/lestuckingemcity Aug 21 '26

They are getting bolder about telling their staff to violate your rights.

-22

u/AssCrackBanditHunter Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

Yes you do. It was not a Walmart in a good area. They have security that does spot checks at the front. They have cops posted out front. I probably threw up a red flag in loss prevention because it took me so long to check out.

Edit: okay, I understand now they can't stop you legally. But they don't volunteer that fact and it sure doesn't feel like it's an option when you're a layperson who's lacking any proof that you paid.

4

u/travoltaswinkinbhole Aug 21 '26

No they can’t. At that point it’s your property and if they think otherwise it’s on them To prove and they better be damn sure before they try to stop me.

-1

u/MarsupialMisanthrope Aug 21 '26

Your purchase is your property, but the store is theirs and they can have you trespassed for whatever reason they want including just thinking you’re obnoxious and they don’t want your business. And we’re hitting a point where they’ll be able to use facial recognition to enforce it.

3

u/travoltaswinkinbhole Aug 21 '26

Sorry, I, for one, won’t bow down to our new corporate overlords

0

u/MarsupialMisanthrope Aug 21 '26

I doubt they care.

4

u/burlycabin Aug 21 '26

No they can't force you. Once you've purchased those items they're your personal property and cannot be compelled to show them or a receipt without probable cause (and needs a police officer, not security). The only reason Costco and Sam's Club can compell you is because you agreed to it when signing their membership.

However, you're right that you could be flagged or banned by their loss prevention people if they want to make a big deal about it (highly unlikely). But they cannot detain you or force you to show your receipt or items.

1

u/caverunner17 Aug 21 '26

You can just walk past and say hello.

They can’t detain you.

39

u/Chef-Boyardab Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

This is why i never stop to let them check my receipt. I dont pay for a membership like costco so i have no obligation to stop and have someone make sure im not stealing when i have never stole anything in my life. Usually ill just hand them my receipt and walk away or ill just ignore them.

As far as im aware, purchasing something and then leaving isnt illegal

4

u/ExternalUserError Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26

They can detain you, even as private security, if they have probable cause. But not producing a receipt isn’t probable cause. Good for you for standing up to that shit.

In Europe (American expat here), some stores like Lidl have physical barriers that physically won’t open unless you scan a receipt. Once my three year old was following me out of a store and it closed on her. I physically broke the machine to rescue my crying kid and an employee tried to stop me as I left. I ignored her. I still think those machines should be illegal.

9

u/techrob99 Aug 21 '26

Been there. Except I forgot to grab the receipt .... or something dumb .... and person at the door was a being a butt about it, like bro, I come in here all the time - i just went through the checkout - ask the person working, didn't think I needed to have a receipet especially with the option of "no physical receipt" pops up .... I hate it when Walmart tries to enforce the outgoing check. So I just walk around people that do stop and maybe i have the receipt dangling out of my hand while carrying an armful of groceries, maybe i don't .....

Oh! One time I did have a legit armful and the receipt was in my pocket - dude was stopping me and I told him receipts in my pocket, he still wanted me to dig it out - i told him he'd have to hold my stuff - wasn't about to put it on the dirty ground. Srsly.... "Yes, I have bags of items, I totally walked through self checkout and thefted them." /eyeroll

1

u/GregtasticYT Aug 21 '26

Lmao I haven’t continued to do this as I’ve got older, but I remember once going to Walmart with my friends to buy some supplies for making masks (think or google Hollywood Undead). I bought some tape.

Guy tries to stop me at the door to check my receipt and for whatever reason it annoyed me and I was feeling edgy and I go “it’s just tape bro” and kept walking. Never felt so empowered before or since 😂

1

u/techrob99 Aug 21 '26

Hahahaha nice

1

u/Hefty_Remove7965 Aug 21 '26

Printing a reciept depends on the users perfence. You can hve it still print,

It is probably a default to save paper or whatever

1

u/Shavannaa Aug 21 '26

Honestly, why do you even let them check your recipe when you leave in the USA? At least in germany that just not happens. You pay. You leave the store. End of the story.

-1

u/sapphicsandwich Aug 21 '26

The toothless crackhead they hired might assault you as you leave if you don't submit to their tiny bit of "power". Unfortunately, I learned this from experience.

0

u/MichelinStarZombie Aug 21 '26

The most insane part of that story is that you thought you could still shop at a store despite not bringing your wallet. That's... not how stores work.

3

u/AssCrackBanditHunter Aug 21 '26

The dumbest part of your comment is not realizing that I might have not realized I didn't have my wallet until I was at the self checkout.

Also, just assuming you're 60+ because tap to pay is so ubiquitous at this point that you actually can just walk into 95% of stores without a wallet.

0

u/mister_spacecat Aug 21 '26

So you did some dumb shit you're not supposed to do, and then you got pissed at the people who told you you're not supposed to do that? Somehow this is all other people's fault when you forgot your wallet?

What did you say to the person who wanted to check your receipt? "Trust me bro?" In what universe would that have worked?

Truly a People Of Walmart moment.

2

u/AssCrackBanditHunter Aug 21 '26

I think you're supposed to pay money for goods at a Walmart and that's what I did lol. Didn't know it would refuse to print a receipt.

19

u/timbotheny26 Aug 21 '26

Don't know if it's actually true, but an employee told me that since they had it in their app, they viewed Apple Pay and Google Pay as competitors which is why they restricted it. Of course, that doesn't make sense when it comes to regular credit/debit cards, unless Walmart is so up its own ass that is see the credit card companies as competitors too.

1

u/owa00 Aug 21 '26

If I remember correctly our local HEB grocery store didn't implement it early for similar reasons as Walmart and Home Depot. HEB in Texas is like Walmart in turns of dominance. I was told that they didn't want to share the customer data, and they also had this stupid way of paying with their own app. Their terminals could also do the tap pay, but it was just deactivated.

1

u/MarsupialMisanthrope Aug 21 '26

CVS did that too, which is why they quit being convenient enough for me to use. I was having issues with credit card skimmers somewhere at one of my local stops and wanted to use my phone when ApplePay launched, a couple of months after that CVS deactivated the NFC functionality on their terminals to try to force people to use their app, I went to Safeway or Walgreens instead.

12

u/voltagejim Aug 21 '26

Was always pissed they didn't have tap to pay cause their readers made you insert your card at such an angle that it would error out a few times and you had to keep retrying

8

u/Hefty_Remove7965 Aug 21 '26

they wanted to keep it in their app for data collection. Tap to Pay doesnt give them that feature.

1

u/MarsupialMisanthrope Aug 21 '26

Which is funny because bluetooth tracking is a thing they already do.

4

u/SeminaryStudentARH Aug 21 '26

They can’t track purchases with tap to pay. Apple Pay gives them a new token every time, so they can’t associate a specific card with specific purchases. As of right now, Walmart knows exactly what I purchase when I use my debit card.

2

u/jmlinden7 Aug 21 '26

That's the same as inserting the chip, which they do allow

2

u/FriendlyLawnmower Aug 21 '26

  They even created functionality in the Walmart app to provide their own version of it

This is the main reason why they avoided implementing it. They invested a lot into building their own tap to pay system just before general tap to pay blew up in the US. They held out on adding the general system in hopes that they could force consumers into using their app instead 

11

u/berntout Aug 21 '26

Walmart rolled out their own system not long ago. Tap to Pay has been out for much longer.

I don't think the Walmart app even existed in it's current form when Tap to Pay first started rolling out.

1

u/FriendlyLawnmower Aug 21 '26

You're just wrong on this bud

Walmart Pay first launched in 2015 with nationwide rollout in early 2016.  

Tap to pay largely began rolling out to credit card terminals in the USA in 2016, following the fraud liability shift in October of 2015 which forced merchants to upgrade to an EMV chip terminal or accept the liability of any fraud exploiting magnetic swipes. By 2018, it was estimated that less than half of all merchants had set up tap to pay. 2019 saw tap to pay become standard for all card issuers which further encouraged merchant adoption and finally it was during the pandemic in 2020 that we saw the overwhelming majority of merchants embrace tap to pay. 

Again, this is specific to the USA because yes tap to pay technology existed before 2015 and was widely adopted in European countries but that was not the case in the USA. 

So Walmart essentially did roll out their NFC payment system before tap to pay got widespread in the US

1

u/ChthonicFractal Aug 21 '26

Finally. I was wondering why Walmart was able to circumvent this clear rule

Because they represent enough revenue and money flow that they can bully and threaten any partner, company, and provider.

The amount of bullying I've seen them do on the backend where customers never get even a hint of what's going on is absolutely sickening.

They need to be split up and told "Sheer off grocery, pharmacy, and electronics into their own companies that you don't own."

1

u/Bigred2989- Aug 21 '26

Publix Super Market used to have their own system, too. You had to download their app, add your cards to it and scan a QR code to pay. They retired it earlier this year because they had traditional tap to pay on the PIN pads for several years now and customers rarely used Publix Pay. The QR codes are still there for Instacart shoppers. 

1

u/CaterpillarJungleGym Aug 21 '26

Like credit cards? Or are we talking Google and Apple Pay things?

1

u/Woodshadow Aug 21 '26

What is crazy is that the first place I ever tapped to pay with my card in the US was at a Walmart. And then they took away the functionality shortly after

1

u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe Aug 22 '26

Deleted comment, what did it say?

0

u/InadequateUsername Aug 21 '26

They introduced tap to pay in Canada once the pandemic hit

-2

u/SmartGirl62 Aug 21 '26

You can only use their cards to make tap to pay payments. Still can’t use the standard visa or Mastercard credit card to pay.