Walmart to offer instant bank payments

Editorial

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According to Bloomberg, the retail giant is tapping into Fiserv’s NOW Network, which integrates with The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow.

The feature – coming next year – provides shoppers with an alternative to the card networks, which Walmart and other retailers have long been in conflict with over interchange fees.

The company first dipped its toe into pay-by-bank earlier this year with Walmart Pay. However, with payments processed through the Automated Clearing House, transactions took around three days to finalise.

On the latest feature, Jamie Henry, VP, emerging payments, Walmart, tells Bloomberg: “When the transaction processes as a real time payment, customers get immediate access to see that payment come through, I see it hit my account and I can properly budget. It’s not as if I’ve got this phantom payment out there that’s going to take place a couple days down the road.”

The new offering is a sign that FedNow and RTP are maturing, as enough banks connect to the systems to make it attractive to large retailers.

Matt Wilcox, head, digital payments, Fiserv, tells Bloomberg: “As an industry we believe we need to create this connectivity.

“FedNow and RTP, they don’t necessarily talk to one another. The NOW Network can play that role in the industry of bringing all these networks together to enable applications like pay-by-bank.”