The process is more high-tech than truly revolutionary. In practice, customers must first sell their bitcoins or ethers via the OnePay wallet, the financial app launched by Walmart, then use the balance converted into dollars to pay. At checkout, the app generates a QR code that debits that balance in fiat currency when the cashier scans it. In other words, from the store's point of view, the transaction is processed like a standard dollar payment-the crypto/USD conversion happens behind the scenes. Moreover, no major retailer accepts these virtual assets directly at this stage: they must go through prior conversion into official currency. Walmart is no exception, but it has managed to make the operation almost seamless for the user.

OnePay: Walmart's super-wallet

This shift fits into Walmart's fintech strategy. In 2021, the group teamed up with Ribbit Capital to create OnePay, a financial subsidiary intended to become a universal banking app. Since then, OnePay has steadily expanded its offering: high-yield savings accounts, credit and debit cards (in partnership with Synchrony), installment payments (via Klarna), peer-to-peer transfers, and even mobile phone plans have been added. Like Asian super apps, the app aims to bring together a wide range of everyday services. The bet is starting to pay off: by late 2025, OnePay already ranked fifth among the most-downloaded financial apps in the United States, ahead of heavyweights such as JPMorgan or Robinhood. Above all, Walmart has a trump card to popularize OnePay: its network of 5,000 stores that draw 150 million customers a week-as many potential users brought into the Walmart ecosystem. By adding cryptocurrency trading to this toolkit, OnePay joins offerings from PayPal, Cash App or Venmo, which already offered bitcoin purchases, strengthening its image as an all-in-one financial app.

Motivations: cutting fees, attracting new customers

Behind the headline, Walmart's motivations are pragmatic. First, reduce the cost of bank fees skimmed from every card payment. Visa and Mastercard effectively impose around 1.5% to 3% in fees per transaction-an unnegotiable "invisible tax” that adds up to billions for a retailer operating on thin margins. By using cryptocurrencies as an alternative payment rail, Walmart can trim those costs: crypto transactions (instantly converted into USD) operate peer-to-peer with fees reduced to the network's basic technical cost. Next, speed up settlement: where a traditional payment can take one to two days to be credited to the merchant's account, a converted crypto payment can be completed almost in real time. The liquidity gain matters for cash flow: funds can be reinvested right away in inventory or logistics. Finally, Walmart aims to regain control of the customer relationship 

With bank cards, payment data largely remained the preserve of banks and interbank networks, depriving Walmart of valuable information. By encouraging customers to go through OnePay, the retailer reclaims control of the "last mile” of the shopping experience: it once again holds purchase data and can use it for marketing, loyalty programs or its in-house financial services. For the retailer, bitcoin is therefore not an end in itself, but one more cog in its dollar-based payment system-an optimized channel rather than a speculative asset to manage.

Public response and first limits

The initiative has been widely discussed, but its concrete impact remains, for now, limited. On the consumer side, interest is real mainly among crypto holders and the unbanked. Thanks to OnePay, the latter can easily convert their digital holdings into a payment method usable at a mainstream retailer.

That said, paying for groceries in bitcoin can prove a questionable financial choice. If BTC surges after the purchase, the user may feel they "wasted” an asset that went up in value-whereas paying by card or cash carries no such future regret 

What is more, US tax rules treat each sale of cryptocurrency as a capital disposal: selling satoshis to buy goods generates taxable capital gains that must be reported to the IRS. Multiplying micro-payments in crypto could therefore complicate life for taxpayers, adding to the accounting and tax tracking burden of their transactions. These pitfalls-price volatility and administrative complexity-help explain why Walmart has kept its messaging low-key: for now, no splashy campaign urging people to pay in bitcoin, only the technical integration in the app 

Precedents, false starts and a measured tactic

Walmart's approach is designed to be tested and to learn from past experiments. This is not the first attempt to bring crypto into retail: as early as the 2010s, a few pioneering shops and e-commerce players announced they would accept bitcoin, but most later reversed course amid volatility and low usage 

Rather than overhaul its checkout lanes, Walmart opted for a painless implementation-instant conversion and a similar back-end-that requires no heavy investment in special terminals or staff training. Note that the group is not new to crypto initiatives: in 2021, it already piloted the installation of Coinstar kiosks in 200 stores, allowing customers to buy bitcoins with cash. That same year, Walmart even found itself, against its will, at the center of a hoax with staying power: a fake press release falsely announced a partnership between the retailer and the cryptocurrency Litecoin, briefly sending its price soaring before being denied. Armed with these lessons, the Bentonville-based company is moving cautiously in 2026: integrating digital assets without disrupting habits or alarming regulators appears to be the watchword. Because no bitcoin enters the tills directly and everything is converted into dollars, the initiative could be launched without major legal hurdles.

Toward widespread adoption?

For the crypto ecosystem, Walmart's move is highly symbolic. It marks another step toward the democratization of virtual currencies, once confined to technophile circles and now courted by mainstream players.

Other brands had paved the way: Starbucks, for example, has let customers pay for their latte in bitcoin since 2021 via a third-party app (with the balance, here too, converted into dollars before reaching the register). Walmart's entry onto the scene, as the world's largest private employer and a bellwether for US consumption, lends new legitimacy to bitcoin and its peers.

Of course, a long road remains before bitcoin or ether are accepted everywhere without friction. That would require clearer tax rules, lower volatility, and a simpler user experience for the general public. But by choosing to open its tills to crypto (itself), Walmart has taken a giant step toward a future in which traditional finance and the crypto economy coexist closely. It remains to be seen whether competitors will follow and whether this giant step will trigger, on a global scale, a genuine paradigm shift in our payment habits.

https://www.marketscreener.com/news/crypto-at-walmart-real-adoption-or-an-illusion-ce7e58dbd08ffe25