This holiday season, Walmart added new features like allowing online shoppers to check in once they got to the parking lot so they could have their online orders ready for pickup.

Twenty-two million customers use the Walmart app each month, and more than half of Walmart’s online orders are now coming from a mobile device. It’s simple, and it’s a secure way for customers to use their smartphone.” “We are creating a seamless shopping experience that includes payment,” Neil Ashe, president and CEO of Walmart’s global e-commerce, told reporters on a conference call. The move signals that Walmart believes it is best to build its own system to better serve its customers, even as it backs an industrywide mobile payment program that it is testing with 10 other major retailers. Walmart has moved into this field as Apple’s one-year-old tap-and-pay system is being expanded to other merchants like Best Buy and KFC and comes several months after Google launched the Android Pay mobile wallet app and Samsung came out with Samsung Pay. Retailers, financial institutions and hardware makers are all trying to get a piece of what could be a very lucrative business. But the move is also the latest salvo in the battle for mobile payments that’s in the early stages. It’s part of an overall mobile strategy to making shopping easier and faster, and it’s the latest feature to be added to its mobile app. While some stores such as Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts allow customers to pay with gift cards, Walmart says it will become the first retailer to launch its own mobile payment system that works with an iPhone or Android device and with a major credit or debit card. It plans to launch the payment feature in all 4,500-plus US stores in the first half of next year. It will start testing the new payment system on Thursday at its stores around Bentonville, Arkansas, where the retailer is based.

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