Walmart teams with Alibaba on mobile payment

Walmart is partnering with Chinese e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba to allow customers to make purchases using mobile devices in 25 of its stores in southern China.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it is partnering with the Alipay payment services subsidiary of Alibaba Holding Group to offer a new mobile payment option to customers in more than a dozen Chinese Walmart stores, which will now accept Alipay to pay for purchases.

The stores are equipped with special scanners that will allow them to read a barcode the Alipay app will produce after automatically calculating final purchase price and accept payment almost instantly. All Walmart stores in China are expected to accept mobile payment in the future.



Walmart currently operates more than 410 stores in China and has identified China as a major growth target. However, Walmart’s customer base in China declined by almost 6% in 2014, compared to the previous year.