The Lowdown On Walmart Pay From The Mouth Of An Exec

What's the future of Walmart Pay, according to a Walmart exec?

Walmart began to roll out Walmart Pay to all 4,600 of its stores in June, and now, about 20 million customers have the payment option available to them through the Walmart app. However, a senior executive at the retail giant said the company views the new service as a way to improve checkout and in-store experiences for customers rather than just as a more convenient mobile payment option.

In a recent Q&A with Internet Retailer, Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services for Walmart, discussed the concept behind, and creation of, Walmart Pay, its future importance to the company and the future of mobile payment solutions.

Eckert said that Walmart began to develop Walmart Pay about 15 months ago when it started to think about ways to improve customers’ overall in-store shopping experience and soon realized that it could also be a way to improve customers’ overall checkout experience.

“For us, Walmart Pay was not a payment capability purely for payment sake,” he told Internet Retailer.

What makes Walmart Pay so unique compared to other mobile payment options, according to Eckert, is that users can use it through the Walmart app with any iOS or Android smartphone at any checkout lane using pretty much any form of payment they choose, everything from credit and debit cards to prepaid or Walmart’s own gift and credit cards.

“There are different types of [mobile] payment types, but you can’t use all the payment types in your purse or wallet. All of those had their limitations, so for a retailer that serves, literally, America every single week, we needed to make sure access and choice were paramount,” according to Eckert. “When we scanned the universe of opportunity, we realized this is something we would have to build ourselves. So, Walmart Pay is the first retail payment application that accepts most forms of payments — that’s credit, debit, gift card, the Walmart shopping card and the Walmart credit card. It works on any device that has Android or iOS.”

To use Walmart Pay, a customer simply visits any register in the store, opens the Walmart app and selects the Walmart Pay option. At any time during the checkout process, a shopper then scans their barcode displayed at the register, a clerk scans and bags the items (or the user does this themselves at self-checkout kiosks), a payment total then appears, the user hits confirm and an eReceipt is automatically sent to the app. And that’s the user’s total checkout experience.

Eckert said that 75 percent of Walmart customers have some form of a smartphone, and 50 percent of those smartphone users use their mobile apps while shopping in-store, which is why Walmart views Walmart Pay as a way to improve the in-store shopping experience as well.

“One of the things we did early on with the Walmart app is paired geofencing services to all of our stores — all 4,000-plus of our stores — so when you have geolocation turned on and you trip that fence, the app actually turns into in-store mode and brings a Swiss army knife worth of capabilities to heads-up display for customers to use,” according to Eckert. “Everything from scanning items to finding store location of items to now Walmart Pay. We’re seeing many millions of customers not only engage in a mobile app for buying, they’re also using it as a remote control in their pocket to improve their overall shopping experience.”

Eckert said shoppers can also use the barcode-scanning feature to find out the price of an item, its availability in the store or to order the item online. Walmart Pay can also be used as a map to help customers navigate stores and locate the exact items they are shopping for.

“If you are looking for barbecue sauce, we can get you to within a four-square-foot section in that store to find it. Not only the aisle, it will also get you to the shelf,” according to Eckert.

Although there are no hard figures on the use of Walmart Pay yet, Eckert said that, since launching in late June, four out of five shoppers have given the app a rating of four stars or more, and 89 percent of transactions on it thus far are coming from repeat users.

Walmart is already thinking about the future of Walmart Pay, and Eckert said that could soon see the retailer developing a way to allow users to refill prescriptions through the app and pick them up in person.

“Once you have Walmart Pay, once you have someone who has downloaded the app and established a payment credential with a profile, you can do some pretty magical things in other areas of the store,” according to Eckert.