Can Walmart Pay Help Boost Holiday Sales?

Can the new Walmart Pay, a mobile wireless app that allows people to make payments as they exit stores instead using cash or credit cards, help boost the holiday sales of the world’s largest retailer? No. The card’s release, two weeks before Christmas, is far too late. An October release might have made a difference.

Walmart Pay has little that is different from other mobile retail payment apps:

Built with the goal of improving how customers check out and dramatically expanding mobile payment access, Walmart Pay is like no other mobile payments solution available today. With this launch, Walmart becomes the only retailer to offer its own payment solution that works with any iOS or Android device*, at any checkout lane, and with any major credit, debit, pre-paid or Walmart gift card – all through the Walmart mobile app. The mobile payment feature will be introduced in select stores beginning this month, with a nationwide launch to be complete by the first half of next year.

By the first half of next year? Really?
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The decision behind the date of the release is another reason Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has been unable to pull away from the pack of other large retailers, particularly Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN). While Wal-Mart may be the largest U.S. retailer, its growth based on same-store sales is close to zero. While its online sales may be second only to Amazon, as measured by traffic to Walmart.com, e-commerce is just a tiny portion of Wal-Mart’s sales.

Walmart Pay may not draw many customers away from the use of American Express, MasterCard or Visa. Its scanning advantage is only modest. Electronic payment and scanning facilities are part of apps launched many months ago and include Apple Pay, which cannot be used at Wal-Mart stores. However, Walmart Pay cannot be used at other retailers.

Part of the retailer’s announcement:

“The simplicity and ease of Walmart Pay comes not only from how it works, but also in how it’s been built,” said Daniel Eckert, senior vice president, services, Walmart U.S. “We made a strategic decision to design Walmart Pay to work with almost any smartphone and accept almost any payment type – even allowing for the integration of other mobile wallets in the future. The result is an innovation that will make the ease of mobile payments a reality for millions of Americans.”

That is the millions of Americans who shop at Wal-Mart and may decide credit cards are not good enough.
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