Walmart Pay to be supported in 500 US-based stores

While Walmart remains among the list of stores stubbornly resisting Apple Pay, the retail giant is slowly pushing forward with its own mobile payment service.

Starting in 110 locations across Walmart’s home state of Arkansas and another 480 stores across the giant state of Texas, the retailer says Walmart Pay is now available at any checkout line within supported stores.

Walmart Pay works by associating a debit or credit card with a Walmart account, then launching and scanning the app from your smartphone during checkout. The benefit is supposed to be part speed, as in not using slow PIN cards and part convenience, you have the option of receiving an in-app receipt. More than that, Walmart Pay works the same on both iOS and Android and supports most pre-paid cards as well as gift cards.

In practice, Walmart could support both Walmart Pay and Apple Pay, but has offered no signal that it’s interested in accepting Apple’s digital wallet anytime soon.

Walmart was also initially part of a band of retailers backing CurrentC, a QR-code based digital wallet similar to Walmart Pay, although efforts for CurrentC to take off have all but stopped in favor of other solutions.

Apple Pay, in the meantime, has expanded support to hundreds of additional banks across the US, major banks in Canada and the UK, and more countries like Singapore, and could see new features like person-to-person payments with iOS 10.