While the previous submission didn't get many upvotes (6) the comments (3) are interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674968

I didn't get that far online. As soon as they said that I needed to create an account to buy something and that it gave them the right to spam me, I closed the window.

Now, they may have later said that Californians have a right to "no spam" (or not) but I really don't care at this point.

I’ve noticed a recent change in Walmart Scan & Go (Walmart Pay) that really illustrates how far their purchase tracking goes. If you’ve set up Walmart Pay with a credit card, and you later use that same physical card in-store, Walmart now appears to associate those transactions with your account as well.

I’m fairly confident of this because the app has started showing me in-store purchases that were not made using Walmart Pay. It suggests they’re linking transactions at the card-number level, not just through the app.

I suspect they may also be tying in-store purchases to your profile if you’ve ever placed an online order, though that part is speculation.

The article misses the other reason that Walmart has invested in multiple attempts at electronic payments: not paying merchant fees to Visa and Mastercard. That's why their system requires you hooking up to your bank account directly.

All of Walmart's attempts at this have been focused on making Walmart's bottom line better, which is why every one of them has failed, whereas Apple Pay is making my payment experience better, and why I use it all the time.

I think one interesting thing that the article does mention is that Walmart does accept Apple Pay and contactless payments in Canada. I suspect this is because Canadians pretty much expect contactless to be accepted anywhere they shop, compared to in America where there are still many places (restaurants mostly) that have limited support for it.

I find it so annoying that they disable the NFC readers on their terminals just to force people to scan a QR code. It makes the whole checkout process feel completely outdated compared to every other store.