Walmart will let customers use Apple Pay after holding out for more than a decade. Why it finally caved

Apple Pay is one of the most popular mobile payment methods in the world. You can use it nearly anywhere where there is a mobile payment terminal. But for well over a decade, one major retailer—Walmart—would not support Apple Pay. Now that’s changing. Here’s what you need to know. Walmart announces tap-to-pay support When Apple launched Apple Pay in 2014, it kicked off the mobile payment boom. For the first time since the smartphone era began in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone, users could finally use their device to easily pay for goods at any properly equipped contactless payment terminal. But with Apple Pay’s launch and its popularity, other tech companies quickly entered the mobile payments arena. This included Samsung’s Samsung Pay and Google’s Android Pay, now known as Google Pay. But while the tech giants all quickly adopted tap-to-pay technology in their phones—and many retailers quickly moved to support the tech—there were some big holdouts. The most notable of those was Walmart. For America’s big box retail giant, and other retailers who initially held out, the fact that Apple Pay went to great lengths to protect users’ privacy and payment data hindered th…