Walmart Ends Long Resistance to Apple and Google Pay

This shift marks a significant departure for the company, which previously attempted to stifle mobile payment competitors by spearheading the ill-fated CurrentC platform. While rivals moved toward industry-standard contactless payments—now accepted at 85% of U.S. retailers—Walmart remained an outlier, forcing customers to rely on its in-house Walmart Pay and Scan-and-Go tools. The decision acknowledges that the retailer’s insistence on a closed ecosystem ultimately inconvenienced its own shoppers.

Full deployment will be a phased process. Following the initial August rollout, the company expects all Walmart and Sam’s Club locations to support the new options by December. Fuel stations remain a longer-term project, with integration scheduled for completion by mid-2027. While management frames the change as a commitment to consumer choice, the move signals a quiet surrender in a decade-long battle to control the point-of-sale experience.