Walmart Is Finally Letting You Pay With Your Phone

Walmart announced on August 21, 2026 that it will start accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay at its stores, including Sam's Club locations, beginning August 24, 2026. Some stores will get the feature first, and Walmart expects all of its stores and clubs to have it by the end of 2026. All fuel stations should have it by mid-2027. (TechCrunch)

Apple Pay and Google Pay let you pay by holding your phone near the checkout terminal instead of swiping a card. Walmart had refused to accept either one for over a decade. Instead, the company pushed its own payment app, Walmart Pay, which works by scanning a QR code on the screen. As recently as January 18, 2026, Walmart did not accept Apple Pay or Google Pay at any of its U.S. stores (9to5Mac), and its help pages told customers to use Walmart Pay instead.

Walmart Pay launched nationally on July 6, 2016, available at every checkout lane with any iOS or Android device and compatible with credit, debit, and pre-paid cards (Walmart Corporate). By using its own system, Walmart could keep your payment data within its own walls and avoid the fees and data-sharing that come with Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Before Walmart Pay, the retailer tried something even bolder. Walmart teamed up with other major retailers on a system called CurrentC, which was designed to skip the credit card networks entirely by pulling money straight from your bank account. CurrentC failed and was shut down in 2016 (TechCrunch).

By the time of this announcement, Apple Pay was already accepted at 85% of U.S. retailers, including most larger stores (TechCrunch), leaving Walmart as one of the most noticeable holdouts among major chains.

The payment news also follows a separate partnership. On January 11, 2026, Walmart and Google announced plans to launch a shopping experience pairing Google's Gemini AI with Walmart's commerce platform (Walmart Corporate). That deal focused on using AI to help you find products, not on payments, but it pointed to a warming relationship between the two companies.

The broader context here is that Walmart's decision closes one of the longest-running standoffs in U.S. retail technology. The company built its own payment system to control your transaction data and steer you toward its own financial products. That strategy made sense for a while. But paying with your phone has gone from a nice perk to something people simply expect. With 85% of U.S. retailers already on board, the cost of being the odd one out likely grew larger than the benefit of holding the line.

One thing worth noting is what the announcement leaves out. It mentions Apple Pay and Google Pay by name but says nothing about other phone-based payment apps like Samsung Pay. Whether the upgraded terminals will work with any tap-to-pay app or only the two named ones is still an open question. Walmart Pay and Sam's Club's Scan-and-Go will continue to work alongside the new options, so Walmart is adding payment methods, not replacing its own.

The fuel station timeline, stretching to mid-2027, reflects the fact that payment terminals at gas pumps are a separate hardware challenge from the ones inside stores. Gas pump dispensers take longer to replace and often involve outside companies that operate them.

For shoppers who already tap their phone at the grocery store, the drugstore, and the coffee shop, not being able to do the same at Walmart has been a steady annoyance. The retailer's customer forums and social media channels have reflected that frustration for years. The August 24 rollout means some shoppers will see the option within days. For everyone else, the end-of-2026 target gives Walmart about four months to bring all remaining locations online.