Walmart just announced it’s rolling out NFC tap-to-pay — Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and plain old contactless cards — across its U.S. stores. A pilot starts August 24, 2026 at select Walmart and Sam’s Club locations, with a phased rollout to every U.S. store by the end of the year and fuel stations following by mid-2027. After more than a decade of being the single most stubborn holdout among major American retailers, it’s finally happening.
How long “a decade” actually is
Apple Pay launched in October 2014. Walmart briefly allowed it, then yanked support almost immediately and pivoted hard to its own QR-code-based Walmart Pay instead, which it had launched around the same time. From that point on, Walmart wasn’t just declining to support Apple Pay specifically — it disabled all NFC contactless payments at checkout, including Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and even tap-to-pay physical credit cards. If your card had the contactless symbol on it, Walmart’s terminals were built to ignore it anyway, on purpose.
That made Walmart an outlier for years. Target, Costco, Kroger, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and H-E-B all rolled out NFC support well before now. Walmart, the largest retailer in the country by sales, was the odd one out — and it wasn’t quiet about why.
The excuse that never quite held up
Walmart’s official line, repeated as recently as last year, was that Walmart Pay offered customers something more convenient than tap-to-pay. In a statement, the company said it doesn’t accept NFC and instead built “convenient solutions” like Walmart Pay that give customers touchless payment on any smartphone, no NFC hardware required.
The more commonly cited real reason had nothing to do with convenience. Walmart Pay’s QR-code checkout runs entirely through Walmart’s own app, which means Walmart controls the entire transaction and captures purchase data directly — down to itemized receipts tied to a Walmart account — in a way that a third-party tap-to-pay platform like Apple Pay doesn’t hand over. Interestingly, the fee theory doesn’t hold up: there’s no extra charge for a business to accept Apple Pay beyond standard card processing fees, since Apple’s cut comes from the issuing bank, not the merchant. Walmart had actually installed newer payment terminals capable of NFC in many stores — it simply left the feature switched off.
Meanwhile, Walmart’s Canadian stores have accepted Apple Pay since 2020. The holdout was a U.S.-only stance the whole time.
What’s actually changing
Starting with the August 24 pilot, customers will be able to hold an iPhone, Apple Watch, Android phone, or a contactless card near the register and pay — full stop, no app, no QR code required. Walmart and Sam’s Club cards will also become addable to Apple Wallet and other digital wallets. Walmart Pay itself isn’t going away; it stays available inside the app alongside cash, physical cards, and the new tap-to-pay option.
Notably, Walmart’s own announcement language is carefully generic — “eligible contactless card, phone, or smartwatch” — without naming Apple directly, even though a company spokesperson confirmed to press that Apple Pay and Google Pay are both included.
Why now
No single cause is cited, but the shift lines up with years of public pressure and social media pile-ons over Walmart being one of the last big-box holdouts, plus the broader retail trend already having flipped: nearly every other major chain solved this years ago, and forcing Walmart Pay’s app-and-QR-code flow on tens of millions of shoppers who already had a tap-to-pay habit everywhere else was an increasingly obvious friction point at checkout.
The bottom line
If you’ve been avoiding Walmart checkout lines because you didn’t want to dig out a physical card or open an app, that friction is going away this year. It took roughly ten years longer than it probably needed to, but “your phone can just tap and pay at Walmart” is finally becoming true — starting next week, and everywhere by New Year’s.
