Wal-Mart will not accept Apple Pay

New York -- Wal-Mart Stores has no plans to join Apple’s newly-announced mobile payments system, Apple Pay, which is due to launch in October.



Wal-Mart is supporting a retailer-owned mobile technology group, the Merchant Customer Exchange, which is launching its own mobile wallet application. The application, called CurrentC, is now in pilot and is expected to be rolled out nationwide in 2015, according to The Washington Post. Best Buy is also among the retailers supporting CurrentC.



Similar to Apple Pay, CurrentC will require shoppers to pay for goods using an app on their smartphone. However, CurrentC is not linked to a credit card which would allow the retailers who take it to avoid paying controversial "swipe" fees.



In another difference, CurrentC works on any smartphone.



“While these two platforms are big enablers, that does not automatically guarantee success. We still need to see whether consumers will find the value proposition enough to start using the system," said Rajesh Kandaswamy, a research director at Gartner, in the Post report. "This pits powerful players against each other, but they are not the only ones."