For years, Walmart was the holdout. The one big store where you could not just tap your phone to pay.
That is finally changing. On Friday, Walmart said it will soon support Apple Pay and Google Pay at its stores and fuel stations, a quiet end to one of the longest-running payment feuds in retail.
The rollout will begin at selected Walmart and Sam's Club locations. The company expects the option to reach every Walmart and Sam's Club store by the end of the year, with fuel stations getting the upgrade around the middle of 2027.
That last date is worth pausing on. Fuel stations are the final piece of the puzzle, and they will not be done until deep into next year. So if you fill up at a Walmart gas pump, you may be waiting a while longer for the tap-to-pay option.
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The rollout is gradual, but the direction is clear. Walmart is finally letting customers pay the way they already pay everywhere else.
Walmart did not make this move lightly. The company had spent years pushing its own payment tools, including Walmart Pay and its Scan-and-Go feature, as a way to keep shoppers inside its own system. Those tools required customers to open a separate app and scan a code at checkout, a friction that many found annoying compared to the simple tap of a phone.
It even backed a rival mobile payment network called CurrentC back in the day. That effort collapsed in 2016, which left Walmart standing almost alone while the rest of the retail world moved on.
Customers kept asking for tap-to-pay anyway. Today, Apple Pay is accepted at 85% of U.S. retailers, including most large stores. Walmart was the odd one out, and the company seems to have finally acknowledged that its stubbornness was putting its own customers at a disadvantage.
Walmart framed the change as simply offering more choice at checkout. That is true, but the timing says something else too. This was a concession, not a celebration.
For most shoppers, this is the kind of update that feels long overdue. You can already tap to pay at Target, Costco, and nearly every other major chain. Now Walmart is joining the club, and the payment experience will finally feel familiar.
The bottom line: If you have been avoiding Walmart because it did not take your phone as a payment method, that excuse is going away.
The rollout is not instant, and the fuel station timing means you might still need a physical card for a while. But the direction is what matters.
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