Walmart Embraces Chase Pay (And The Rest Of The Mobile Pay Plays This Week)

Walmart and Chase are becoming payments BFFs.

In late September, the two firms announced that Walmart and Sam’s Club would flip its processing business to Chase via ChaseNet. You’ll recall that Chase and Visa negotiated a pretty sweet deal about three years ago that basically allowed Chase to license a private version of VisaNet and therefore create direct links between issuers and merchants. That means that Chase is now able to negotiate pricing directly with merchants – and is the cornerstone of Chase Pay’s announced plans to ditch interchange fees in the traditional sense for a fixed fee to merchants that would decline as merchants add volume.

And since we know how Walmart feels about interchange, we can assume that for Walmart, those fixed fees have gone from teeny tiny to very teeny tiny.

But that, as it turns out, was just the beginning of the Walmart and Chase Pay friendship. Yesterday, the two firms announced that Chase Pay would now be accepted at Walmart.

The New Deal

Starting next year, Walmart will offer Chase Pay to customers as a method to pay on Walmart.com, within the Walmart app and even in conjunction with Walmart’s own proprietary payment project, Walmart Pay.

“We want our card to be wherever our consumers want their card to be,” Chase’s Chief Executive for Cards Kevin Watters said of the deal.

The partnership highlights similar commitments from two different firms — leveraging mobile payments as a method to both offer more to consumers on the front end and as a method to lock down greater efficiency of operations on the back end.

“We believe the agreements we have announced will bring much needed competition to the payments markets,” a Walmart spokesman said, highlighting Walmart’s long and loving relationship with robust competition.

Walmart is, comparatively speaking, a newer player in the mobile commerce derby — its own in-app mobile payment tool launched just last December. Chase Pay will be the first big addition to the Walmart Pay app — becoming another in-app option along with credit cards or gift cards.

The Take-Away

The Walmart pick-up is seen as a major step forward for Chase Pay as it attempts a wider rollout through the end of this year and into 2017. But we surmise that is just the starting point. One of the things that Chase Pay has touted is its ability to fund rewards and promotions given the favorable economics of their platform. Walmart.com – which is how Walmart Pay is activated, we know from previous reports, sees 22M consumers each month in Walmart stores accessing the Walmart.com app. Walmart Pay is seen as a natural extension to generating mobile payments momentum. Chase Pay inside might likely need a little boost to become top of wallet — so stay tuned.

 

In Other Mobile Payments News

Apple Pay picked up a few more new banks. Apple Pay has added 23 more banks and credit unions to its U.S. base. Apple Pay exec Jennifer Bailey has said that she will be announcing expanded ground for Apple Pay at an industry event later in the month.

When is £300M in processed payments not something for a start-up to celebrate? When that start-up is Paym and the big number announcement is accompanied by news that growth in the user base has declined notably over the last few months — with no immediate signs of turn-around.

Alipay Is Expanding To … Everywhere. With some freshly created deals with Verifone and First Data, Alipay has stepped up its efforts to enter the U.S. market — the latest in a series of moves over a 2016 that has included “aggressive expansion into U.K., Germany, Thailand and Australia. It has caused some to say out loud, will Alipay win the global mPay race before its American counterparts ever get out of the gate?

Google Wallet — yes it does still exist, and actually, it got an upgrade. Google rolled out the newest web app version of Google Wallet this week that makes P2P payments as easy as having a browser and a debit card.

Android Pay also added a bunch of banks (maybe Capitol One?) Capitol One is definitely on the list of banks Google published — but that information has been mistakenly published before and neither firm has confirmed. Cap One did announce support for Samsung Pay in September, though — so the move has recent precedent.