Walmart and Sam’s Club shoppers will soon have a new way to pay at checkout.
Starting Aug. 24, 2026, select Walmart and Sam’s Club stores will accept Tap to Pay, enabling customers to pay with contactless methods including certain credit and debit cards, a digital wallet on their smartphone, or smartwatch.
Tap to Pay will be available in all Walmart and Sam’s Club locations by the end of 2026 and to branded fuel stations by 2027.
The adoption of Tap to Pay brings Walmart up to speed with most other retailers and the broader payment landscape that embraced contactless payments in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prior to this change, Walmart shoppers who preferred contactless payments had to use Walmart Pay housed within the Walmart app.
Tap-to-pay rollout schedule at Walmart
The website 9to5Mac, which focuses on news and reviews of Apple products, including Apple Pay, obtained a memo to Walmart store managers detailing the tap-to-pay rollout plan. According to the website, the deployment begins in late August with stores in Arkansas — Walmart's home base — and finishes with states in the Northeast in early October. The rollout dates, as identified by 9to5Mac:
- Aug. 24-31: Arkansas.
- Sept. 10: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington.
- Sept. 14: Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma.
- Sept. 17: Texas.
- Sept. 21: Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming.
- Sept. 24: Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin.
- Sept. 28: Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee.
- Oct. 1: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi.
- Oct. 5: Florida.
- Oct. 8: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Puerto Rico.
- Oct 12: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, District of Columbia.
The website noted that Missouri appears to have been omitted from the list in the memo.
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