News

Customers at all of Walmart’s 4,600-plus U.S. stores can now use the Walmart Pay digital payment service.   This is an impressive feat, especially considering Walmart Pay was only announced in December 2015 and didn’t start undergoing official rollout until May 2016. While everyone agrees Walmart Pay reaching full implementation is a big deal, there is less agreement on how this will affect the digital payment landscape.  

Walmart grocery shoppers in North Carolina and Virginia may notice an improved assortment.   The discount giant is opening a 450,000-sq.-ft. distribution center in Mebane, North Carolina, on Wednesday, July 13. The facility, which cost nearly $100 million, will be dedicated to distributing perishables to stores in North Carolina and Virginia.  

Target Corp. is tapping into its consumer base, including kids, to stay on an upward trajectory.

PetSmart is ensuring that it has the right back-end infrastructure to support front-end omnichannel commerce.  

A text-based “store” may sound like a flight of fancy, but Kaboom Chat is graphically bringing it to life.   The Dallas-based specialty comic book retailer is leveraging the Samus Chat text-based commerce app to offer a mobile store and informational platform. Kaboom Chat asks customers some discovery questions when they first register, which then enables the retailer to auto-populate the SMS-based store when they visit via mobile phone.  

Payment processing platform Worldpay isn’t naming names, but appears to be owning up to playing a major role in the Etsy transactional outage.   Since July 1, what Etsy has described as a third-party payments processing issue has stalled thousands or even millions of online transactions. In a running thread on the online marketplace’s “Bugs” community forum, some users have been posting that their delayed orders have gone through, but others still complain of inability to process payments.  

Brookfield Asset Management announced the completion of its deal to acquire Rouse Properties at a price of $18.25 per share.   Rouse will be merged with Brookfield’s BSREP II Retailing Pool LLC affiliate and the acquired company’s stock will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.