Walmart is partnering with Fiserv to enable online shoppers to pay directly and instantly from their bank account.
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Accordingly BloombergThe retail giant relies on Fiserv’s NOW network, which is integrated with the Real Time Payments network of The Clearing House and the Federal Reserve’s FedNow.
The feature, available next year, offers shoppers an alternative to the card networks that Walmart and other retailers have long clashed with over interchange fees.
With Walmart Pay, the company made its first entry into bank payments at the beginning of the year. However, since the payments were processed through the Automated Clearing House, the transactions took approximately three days to clear.
Jamie Henry, VP, Emerging Payments, Walmart, tells Bloomberg about the latest feature: “When the transaction is processed as a real-time payment, customers get instant access to see that the payment is coming into budget. It’s not like I have this phantom payment out there that’s going to happen in a few days.”
The new offering is a sign that FedNow and RTP are maturing, with enough banks joining the systems to make it attractive to large retailers.
Matt Wilcox, head of digital payments at Fiserv, tells Bloomberg: “As an industry, we believe we need to create this connectivity.
“FedNow and RTP don’t necessarily talk to each other. The NOW Network can play this role in the industry by bringing all of these networks together to enable applications such as bank transfer payments.”
