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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is giving customers another reason both to take its credit cards and use its Walmart Pay mobile wallet by enabling new cardholders to use their credit accounts immediately upon approval via Walmart Pay rather than having to wait for a plastic card to come in the mail.
“With this functionality, from the moment they are approved, customers can use their new Walmart credit card at all Walmart store locations and on Walmart.com before their physical card even arrives in the mail,” Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services for Walmart U.S., said in a blog post Wednesday. “It’s yet another way we’re meeting customers where they are—on their mobile devices—and helping to make their lives easier and more convenient.
Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart offers a private-label credit card and a cobranded Mastercard, both issued by Stamford, Conn.-based Synchrony Financial’s Synchrony Bank. The new policy covers both cards, a Wal-Mart spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News.
Eckert said Wal-Mart is “always looking for ways to help our customers move faster and save precious time—and even though we’re just one year in, Walmart Pay plays a big part in that. That’s why the team’s added a new enhancement to Walmart Pay that gives customers nearly instant access to their new Walmart credit cards.”
Wal-Mart rolled out Walmart Pay in the spring and summer of 2016 as an enhancement to its mobile shopping app. Customers can load any credit, debit, prepaid, or Walmart gift card into the wallet. The service uses QR codes to transmit data between the customer’s smart phone and Wal-Mart’s point-of-sale system.
Wal-Mart hasn’t disclosed how many customers use Walmart Pay. “What we can say is that the number continues to grow every day, and we are incredibly pleased by the feedback from our customers,” the spokesperson says.
