Walmart Adds on One More Payment Method with MasterPass
Walmart’s expansion plans carry on unabated, as the company recently added one more payment method to its roster.
Starting this year, Walmart’s various online properties will start accepting the MasterPass digital wallet system as payment. It might seem like a shot of overkill, but there’s actually some sound reasoning involved.
MasterCard’s group executive of U.S market development, Michael Cyr, offered comment on why Walmart was going with MasterPass. He noted that both MasterCard and Walmart have enjoyed a long-standing mutual relationship, and making the expansion into online operations made sense.
Plus, Cyr noted, with MasterPass, users could get access to a simple one-touch system that allowed people to place orders and pay with one click, much in the same way Amazon’s been offering things for years.
Those who haven’t already can set up a MasterPass system online, or if a physical presence is preferred, users can go to a participating bank instead.
With Walmart looking to set up its own payment system, it would be easy to think that this is just overkill in the options department. Worse, it might actually end up cannibalizing a bit of the user market from Walmart’s system.
It’s worth bearing in mind that MasterPass is an online system, so there’s not likely to be a lot of crossover between the stores and the online. It might end up taking some customers out of the store proper and moving such over to online systems, which isn’t the greatest news for Walmart, but considering the growth of ship-to-store, it might serve to put a little extra punch in the entire system.
Theoretically, Walmart could probably remove most of its general merchandise operations, shrink its stores to about half standard size, stock only perishables in the physical storefront and still come out ahead.
In the end, it’s all about options, and Walmart seems to be giving mobile, physical, and online shoppers alike plenty of these. It’s easy to forget that mobile payments are just part of the Walmart operation, and if people turn to another payment system to shop at Walmart, they’re still shopping at Walmart.
In the end, this is just one more option for people to use and increase the chances that, one way or another, someone is giving Walmart money.