New Report Says that Walmart Will Never Accept Apple Pay

Maura · Nov 10, 2014

9to5 Mac reports today on a new report from Re/code into why Walmart “will never accept Apple Pay.”

According to Re/code, one of the main stumbling blocks is Walmart’s belief that the fees that merchants have to pay banks when someone swipes a credit card in a Walmart store is too high.

And why should this affect Apple Pay? Because Apple Pay supports Visa and MasterCard, which are two of the companies that set the fees that Walmart, and other retailers in the MCX consortium, have to pay, and which they are not at all happy about paying.

Bearing this in mind, Walmart and the rest of MCX believe that an iPhone-based payment service will not help their campaign to get credit card fees lowered and the entire payment structure changed.

“Since Apple Pay supports Visa and MasterCard credit cards, Walmart and other MCX retailers believe the iPhone-based payments service just perpetuates the traditional payments fee structure they despise,” explains Re/code.

Source: 9to5 Mac

scifan57 · Nov 10, 2014

If true, then Walmart and it's MCX partners will also never again accept any kind of contactless payments as enabling contactless payments would allow Apple Pay. Besides the security issue, the biggest problem with the CurrentC payment system promoted by MCX is the total lack of buyer protection like the chargeback feature provided by the credit card companies.

bear7962 · Nov 10, 2014

Walmart is good at playing both sides of the fence. They are also Synchrony Bank but I am guessing their bank's Visa and Mastercards will never join Apple Pay. If you own the bank, the bank fee is basically a wash but they will not want to send that 15% to Apple. Unless they start losing customers and Walmart has got their demographic nailed. Unlike Best Buy and some other of the CurrentC group that are tiring to boost their numbers. At least, that is my impression.

scifan57 · Nov 10, 2014

I believe it's 1.5% that Apple charges, not 15%.

bear7962 · Nov 10, 2014

scifan57 said:
I believe it's 1.5% that Apple charges, not 15%.

You are probably right

OUTL4W · Nov 11, 2014

Is there a reason why we couldn't link our bank account directly to Apple pay...instead of credit cards? Similar to how I have paypal set up to directly deduct from my checking acct.

scifan57 · Nov 11, 2014

OUTL4W said:
Is there a reason why we couldn't link our bank account directly to Apple pay...instead of credit cards? Similar to how I have paypal set up to directly deduct from my checking acct.

It would likely be not as annonymous as using the credit card with Apple Pay and you would lose the buyer and fraud protections offered by the credit card company.

OUTL4W · Nov 11, 2014

So using my PayPal online is more secure than using Apple pay if it were linked to my PayPal? Really not understanding why they wouldn't...my bank provides fraud protection and not sure why all banks don't.

Still don't see why they wouldn't at least allow us to link our PayPal account to it. Unless Apple gets a kickback from the credit card companies.

bear7962 · Nov 11, 2014

PayPal is a competetor to Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Apple Pay is an NFC reader scanning the virtual credit card and neither Apple nor your phone store more than your virtual info provided by the banks. Federal law mandates the banks provide fraud protection for credit card purchases. PayPal provides its own protections. The banks are paying Apple for Apple Pay use, apparently what they save in credit card fraud cases will more than cover that. Is Paypal going to pay Apple for access the way the banks do? And on a personal note, the only time I needed help from PayPal they came up short. And I had to eat the loss. I came away believing I should have just charged it so my bank would have contested the charge.