Walmart moves away from MCX, rolls out Walmart Pay

Sarah Nassauer, writing for the Wall Street Journal [PAYWALL]:

The retail behemoth is adding a feature to its existing mobile app so consumers can pay at the register with any payment information stored in their Walmart.com account, including gift cards, debit cards or credit cards. The retailer plans to release the payment capability to its 4,600 U.S. stores in the first half of next year, company executives said on Wednesday.

But what about Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) and their CurrentC payment system?

Wal-Mart’s offering marks a definitive move away from the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, a band of retailers and restaurants that joined together in 2012 to build a mobile payment technology called CurrentC that would help them sidestep the billions of dollars spent on credit-card payments each year. MCX started testing CurrentC in some Columbus, Ohio, retail locations including Target Corp. earlier this year.

Mr. Eckert said the retailer remains committed to MCX and the CurrentC app, and said in the future, Wal-Mart’s app could integrate other mobile payment systems like CurrentC and Apple Pay as a form of payment as it does now with credit cards.

The technology behind WalmartPay:

With the new system called Walmart Pay, shoppers use Wal-Mart’s app and camera feature to scan a QR code at the register which then connects to the payment cards on file in their Walmart.com accounts. App users also can pay for part of their purchase with cash when using the mobile system.

Walmart still has not rolled out NFC terminals in its stores, so Apple Pay is not yet an option.