Walmart teams up with Fiserv to enable instant bank payments
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American multinational retail giant Walmart recently partnered up with Fiserv in order to improve customers’ shopping experience. According to the companies, the partnership will allow online shoppers to make instant, direct payments from their bank accounts.
Fiserv’s NOW Network Enables The Pay-By-Bank Feature
The retail giant will make direct bank account payments possible by tapping into Fiserv’s NOW Network. The network integrates with The Clearing House’s Real Time Payments network, as well as the Federal Reserve’s FedNow system.
The feature is expected to become available at some point in 2025. Walmart said that it will serve as an alternative to card networks, which the company has long since been in conflict with over interchange fees, alongside many other firms with similar issues.
Earlier this year, Walmart tested the pay-by-bank waters by launching Walmart Pay. However, the payments are being processed through the Automated Clearing House, which resulted in a long time needed to finalize transactions — often entire days. This spoiled the experience for both Walmart and its customers, which is why the company has decided to try out a new approach, leading it to Fiserv.
Commenting on the newest feature, Walmart’s Vice President of Emerging Payments, Jamie Henry said: “When the transaction processes as a real-time payment, customers get immediate access to see that payment come through, I see it hit my account and I can properly budget. It’s not as if I’ve got this phantom payment out there that’s going to take place a couple of days down the road.”
RTP And FedNow Networks Are Maturing
The new offering also has another role — it acts as a sign that RTP and FedNow payment networks are maturing, despite the initial skepticism. The networks have seen enough banks join the systems to make them seem attractive to large retailers, who are now more than ready to join up if it means improving the payment methods.
Not only will that be better for the merchants themselves, but offering direct payment methods would also mean a simpler and more straightforward experience for the customers, as Henry pointed out.
Meanwhile, Fiserv’s Head of Digital Payments, Matt Wilcox, also commented on the new development by saying that the industry needs to create this connectivity. Wilcox stressed that FedNow and RTP do not necessarily talk to one another, and that the NOW Network can play that role in the industry of bringing different networks together and making them work with one another to enable simple applications like pay-by-bank.
