Walmart has spent years as one of the last major US retailers holding out on contactless payments. That’s changing now, and it’s a bigger deal than it might sound.

The rollout began on August 24 at select Walmart and Sam’s Club locations, letting shoppers pay by tapping a contactless card, phone, or smartwatch at checkout instead of swiping or inserting. Walmart says it plans to have tap-to-pay running in every US store and club by the end of 2026, with gas stations getting the same option by mid-2027.

Why this took Walmart so long?

Target added contactless payments back in 2018. Most major retailers followed within a few years as Apple Pay adoption grew. Walmart didn’t. For a long stretch, Walmart and Target were the two biggest names in American retail still refusing to accept Apple Pay and similar contactless wallets at their registers, largely because Walmart was pushing its own in-house alternative, Walmart Pay, through its app instead.

That’s part of what makes this rollout worth paying attention to. It’s not Walmart adding some minor convenience feature. It’s the company finally dropping its resistance to a payment method the rest of retail settled on years ago.

What’s actually changing at checkout?

This technology is not here to take the place of anything that you’re currently using. Everything else from cash payments, credit/debit card payments, and even Walmart Pay in the app will work in exactly the same way as it has been until now. Tap-to-pay is simply giving us another option along with those other forms of payment.

Walmart is also letting customers add eligible Walmart, Sam’s Club, and OnePay cards directly into their digital wallets, so those cards can be used the same tap-based way as any other contactless card.

Sam’s Club members already had a separate contactless-style option through Scan & Go, which lets you scan items on your phone as you shop and skip the register line entirely. Tap-to-pay is a different, more traditional checkout experience sitting alongside that.

What you actually need for it to work

You don’t need to do anything special to prepare. If your existing debit or credit card has a contactless symbol on it (four curved lines, similar to a Wi-Fi icon), it already supports tap-to-pay. If you’re using a phone, you’ll need a digital wallet like Apple Pay or Google Pay set up with a supported card, something most people who’ve used contactless payments anywhere else likely already have configured.

The rollout is happening store by store rather than everywhere at once, so it’s worth checking at the register whether your local Walmart or Sam’s Club has it live yet, since full coverage isn’t expected until the end of the year.

Also Read: MrBeast’s $10 Million YouTube Video Took 1,000+ Hours of His Own Work