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It’s 2026. Why Can’t You Tap to Pay at Walmart?
By Adam Hardy MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Walmart’s payment policy often leads to abandoned carts and embarrassing moments at checkout.
In 2026, nearly all major stores offer tap-to-pay options. Even vendors at farmers markets often allow shoppers to buy things with a contactless wave of their mobile phone.
There is one very notable exception to this trend: Walmart. The largest retailer in the country aside from Amazon still does not accept payments like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay in U.S. stores, despite years of demand from shoppers.
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The unshakeable policy decision from the retail giant has spurred a torrent of memes and complaints online.
“Walmart not taking Apple Pay just speaks volumes,” one user posted on X in January. “They are living in the early 2000s.”
“The amount of customers each day with full carts of groceries that end up walking out because we don’t have Apple Pay is really high,” another shopper posted on Reddit in April. “And half the stuff in the carts is cold stuff which gets thrown out.”
“Can’t they see that Gen Z don’t want to carry cards? Let alone cash,” the user added.
There is some truth to that. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank shows that shoppers under the age of 25 rarely use cash, building on prior findings that younger Americans strongly prefer to pay with their phones.
Why Walmart still doesn’t accept Apple Pay or Google Pay
Online, shoppers have speculated that Walmart simply doesn’t want to update the checkout stations at its over 4,600 U.S. locations to accommodate contactless payment options. (Walmart accepts Apple Pay and Google Pay in Canada.)
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But experts say there’s likely another, more strategic reason: Walmart doesn’t want to cede control of U.S. shopper data to other payment providers.
Retail analysts told Business Insider that it makes more sense for Walmart to risk not offering Apple Pay or Google Pay so that it can steer customers toward its own payment methods — namely, the Walmart app and OnePay, the retailer’s latest fintech endeavor.
Both apps act as digital wallets that allow for contactless payments at Walmart stores in the U.S. A Walmart spokesperson hinted toward this when the blog MacRumors asked about Apple Pay in 2025.
“We do not accept [tap to pay] and instead have implemented convenient solutions,” the spokesperson said. “We have also invested in innovative technologies that go beyond payments, such as Scan & Go, which allow Sam’s Club and Walmart+ members to bypass the checkout altogether, providing a truly touchless shopping experience.”
Walmart declined to respond to several requests for comment from Money.
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Adam Hardy is Money's lead data journalist. He writes news and feature stories aimed at helping everyday people manage their finances. He joined Money full-time in 2021 but has covered personal finance and economic topics since 2018. Previously, he worked for Forbes Advisor, The Penny Hoarder and Creative Loafing. In addition to those outlets, Adam’s work has been featured in a variety of local, national and international publications, including the Asia Times, Business Insider, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq and several others. Adam graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied magazine journalism and sociology. As a first-generation college graduate from a low-income, single-parent household, Adam understands firsthand the financial barriers that plague low-income Americans. His reporting aims to illuminate these issues. Since joining Money, Adam has already written over 500 articles, including a cover story on financial surveillance, a profile of Director Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and an investigation into flexible spending accounts, which found that workers forfeit billions of dollars annually through the workplace plans. He has also led data analysis on several of Money’s marquee rankings, including Best Hospitals, Best Credit Cards, Best Places to Live and others. In 2025, Adam was named a Goldschmidt Data Journalism Fellow by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). As part of the fellowship, he received hands-on training from SABEW, the U.S. Census, U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal government agencies in Washington, D.C. Adam also holds a multimedia storytelling certificate from Poynter’s News University and a data journalism certificate from the Investigative Reporters and Editors at the University of Missouri. In 2017, he received an English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge, which he utilized during his time in Seoul, South Korea. There, he taught students of all ages, from 5 to 65, and worked with North Korean refugees who were resettling in the area. Now, Adam lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his pup Bambi. He is a card-carrying shuffleboard club member.