Why shunning Apple Pay no longer works for Walmart

• Key insights: Walmart will support Apple Pay and other NFC wallets, ending a long holdout.
• What's at stake: As contactless payments become more common, Walmart's stance was drawing consumer complaints. 
• Forward look: Walmart will support near-field communication in all U.S. stores by the end of 2026 and gas stations by mid-2027.

With contactless payments becoming common, Walmart is easing its restriction on Apple Pay and its supporting technology, ending one of the payment industry's longest standoffs.

Walmart on Monday began accepting Tap to Pay, or Apple's enabling near-field communication contactless technology, at select Walmart and Sam's Club locations, with a full rollout in the U.S. by the end of the year. Walmart's gas stations will support the technology by mid-2027. Walmart and Apple did not comment by deadline, but the decision comes as mobile wallets become mainstream, making it more difficult for merchants to be selective.

"Contactless volume overall has grown significantly, especially for mobile wallets, meaning this has become a customer satisfaction issue," Aaron Press, research director for worldwide payment strategies at IDC, told American Banker. 

Too big to ignore?

Large merchants, including Walmart, were initially reluctant to support Apple Pay, preferring to use QR codes to support contactless payments as a way to better control transaction data and its potential for marketing. 

But NFC contactless payments have become almost ubiquitous, with Apple Pay becoming the world's most popular digital wallet, with more than 800 million users, according to Capital One, which last updated its statistics on July 26. Capital One says Apple Pay usership in the U.S. is on pace to grow from 70 million to more than 84 million in the next four years, adding that more than 90% of U.S. retailers accept Apple Pay and the app has a 92% market share of the U.S. mobile payment market. 

"Consumers used to the ease of paying with a tap, whether with a card or a phone, are annoyed when they can't use contactless," Press said. "Contactless is also much faster, and that time adds up in a checkout line, which is again especially true at Walmart's scale."

Consumers have complained about not being able to use NFC wallets at Walmart for years. Comic Kevin Fredericks, for example, made fun of Walmart not accepting Apple Pay in a 2025 social media post that was viewed more than four million times in less than 24 hours. 

Why is Walmart caving now? Walmart likely figured out a way to route debit transactions through Apple Pay and Google Pay to minimize costs, and felt enough pressure from customers to make the change, according to Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting. 

"They have also probably managed to negotiate the cost of credit down to the point that it is not significantly above debit," McPherson told American Banker. "Walmart probably got the economics to a point where it made sense for them to give in to consumer pressure."

In its announcement, which did not mention Apple, Walmart said, "We want customers and members to have choice in how they pay, so they can check out in the way that works best for them. Tap to Pay gives customers and members another familiar and convenient way to pay at checkout using contactless payment methods," Walmart said while touting Walmart's own payment options. "Tap to Pay is a great addition to the other payment options already offered like cash, credit card or Walmart Pay — where customers can use the Walmart app to pay, view purchases and receipts, as well as access Walmart+ fuel savings. At Sam's Club, members can also use Scan."

Walmart's holdout

Walmart has often taken a hard line on negotiations with payment providers, threatening to ban credit cards in certain markets and pushing back against legal settlements in class action card fee suits with Visa and Mastercard.

"Walmart's [acceptance of Apple Pay] seems like a win for the card networks and card issuers given that Walmart was reluctant to adopt tap to pay due to the higher cost," Tony DeSanctis, a senior director at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker. "Regardless, Walmart interchange continues to be among the lowest in the merchant ecosystem."

Walmart also has its own financial services ambitions. Walmart offers payments and other financial products through its majority-owned fintech, One. It is also exploring its own stablecoin as a way to reduce card acceptance costs and streamline treasury management. And in the past, Walmart was a leader of the Merchant Customer Exchange, a cross-merchant initiative to build a digital wallet as a rival to Apple Pay. The wallet, called CurrentC, never made it out of pilot. 

Emerging payment technology may also encourage Walmart to be more open. 

Walmart's problem with Apple Pay and Google Pay hiding card details via tokenization gets flipped by agentic commerce, according to Phil Philliou, a payments consultant. 

"The same tokenized, interoperable rail that lets a customer tap any wallet will let an AI agent check out on their behalf," Philliou told American Banker. Walmart is already building toward that through the Universal Commerce Protocol with Google and its own Sparky assistant. "Giving up control at checkout now looks like staging for a world where the agent selects the payment method, not the shopper," Philliou said. "Walmart understands the new world of agentic commerce."