What you need to know
- Walmart is finally embracing contactless payments, as Apple Pay and Google Pay are coming to Walmart and Sam’s Club after years of resistance.
- Tap to Pay will reach all U.S. Walmart stores and Sam’s Clubs by the end of 2026, with fuel stations following by mid-2027.
- Cash, chip cards, Walmart Pay, and Sam’s Club Scan & Go will remain available alongside the new payment option.
Walmart is finally throwing in the towel on its notorious resistance to contactless payments. After years of pushing shoppers to its proprietary Walmart Pay app, the retail giant is rolling out standard Tap to Pay, meaning both Google Pay and Apple Pay are on their way to checkout lines near you.
Starting August 24, Walmart and Sam’s Club locations nationwide will begin to deploy Tap to Pay, the retailer announced today. The feature will be rolled out to all of its U.S. stores and clubs by the end of 2026 and to its fuel stations by the middle of 2027.
This allows shoppers to tap an eligible contactless card, phone or smartwatch at the payment terminal instead of having to pull out a physical card or open Walmart’s app. Android users can add an eligible card to Google Wallet and tap to pay when the feature is available at your store, Google says. Walmart will also allow customers to add eligible Walmart, Sam’s Club, and OnePay cards to compatible digital wallets.
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That sounds like a basic checkout upgrade for 2026, but Walmart has resisted it for years. Instead, the retailer promoted Walmart Pay, which uses a QR code at the register, and Sam’s Club offered Scan & Go, which let shoppers skip checkout altogether. Walmart also supported CurrentC, a rival mobile-payment initiative that ultimately shuttered a few years ago.
Customers, meanwhile, kept asking. And they weren’t the only ones. With most U.S. retailers already accepting contactless payments, Walmart’s holdout was becoming more conspicuous. The company has effectively admitted defeat now, realizing that forcing shoppers into its own system was putting its own customers at a disadvantage.
Existing checkout options like cash, physical chip cards, Walmart Pay, and Sam’s Club Scan & Go aren’t going anywhere – this just gives shoppers the frictionless checkout flexibility they’ve been asking for for years.
And there’s a practical privacy benefit: when you pay with a digital wallet, the retailer generally doesn’t get the physical card number that’s stored on your account.