Walmart in talks with several mobile wallet firms to add payment options to Walmart Pay, after announcing Chase Pay as a new payment option beginning next year
Nandita Bose / Reuters :
Context & Ripple Effects
Walmart Pay launched as a closed, retailer-only wallet in select US stores in December 2015 and reached all 4,600-plus US stores by mid-2016 — a deliberate alternative to the contactless rails Walmart long refused. Adding Chase Pay, and now negotiating with several other wallet firms, converts that closed loop into an aggregation platform.
The move also lands mid-race: Reuters reported days earlier that Target was in initial development of its own mobile wallet, so Walmart is positioning Walmart Pay as the hub rivals' customers can pay through rather than a walled garden they must join.
First-order effects
- Chase Pay holders get a native way to pay inside Walmart Pay from next year, and the wallet firms currently in talks stand to gain access to Walmart's full US store footprint without building their own acceptance network.
Second-order effects
- Target's competing wallet effort now faces a Walmart that accepts third-party wallets instead of demanding loyalty to one app, raising the bar for any retailer-only wallet to justify itself.
- The partnership template extends beyond payments — Walmart's later deal letting PayPal users deposit and withdraw cash inside its stores shows the same openness being monetized through financial services foot traffic.
Third-order effects
- The arc runs from proprietary wallet to full interoperability: a decade later Walmart committed to contactless Tap to Pay supporting Apple Pay and Google Pay by the end of 2026, suggesting retailer wallets survive not as moats but as front-ends that must eventually accept everyone else's credentials.
The trend: Retailer-owned mobile wallets are evolving from walled-garden payment apps into interoperable platforms that progressively absorb rival wallets and networks.