Here’s Why Walmart Will Never Start Accepting Apple Pay [VIDEO]

eWalmart’s assistant treasurer Mike Cook, one of the masterminds of MCX, the consotorium of retailers who recently banned Apple Pay in favour of the upcoming CurrentC, has revealed at a recent payments conference called Money2020 that rejection of Apple’s mobile payments system had little to do with their issues with credit card fees, Re/Code is reporting.

Mr. Cook said that MCX is creating CurrentC mainly to craft a system that combines loyalty offers and a mobile payment system in one. While Apple Pay supports Visa and Mastercard credit cards, Walmart and other MCX retailers believe “it just perpetuates the traditional payments fee structure they despise”. One the other hand, the MCX’s CurrentC app favours transactions funded by store-branded cards or a connection with a customer’s checking account, all of which carry lower fees than credit card purchases.

“MCX’s CEO said at the conference that the app will also launch with some traditional credit cards, though he didn’t say which brands of cards. Don’t expect to see traditional Visa and Mastercard credit cards in CurrentC anytime soon, execs from those two companies indicated to me in an onstage interview at the conference.

When you watch the interaction between Cook, one of the biggest champions of MCX, and Visa’s McCarthy, this should come as no surprise. Nor should the realization that Walmart will never accept Apple Pay, the service that the credit card networks support.”

Check out the following video showing Walmart executives confront Visa over Apple Pay ban: