BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Walmart earlier this month introduced Walmart Pay, a mobile payment system that permits shoppers at Walmart stores to pay for merchandise with their smartphones.

“Walmart Pay is the latest example, and a powerful addition, of how we are transforming the shopping experience by seamlessly connecting online, mobile and stores for the 140 million customers who shop with us weekly,” said Neil Ashe, president and chief executive officer of Walmart Global eCommerce.

Walmart Pay was introduced into selected stores in December and is scheduled to get a nationwide rollout in the first half of 2016, Ashe said.

Walmart Pay, the retailer’s version of Apple Pay and Google Wallet, works through Walmart’s mobile app on Apple and Android devices that are equipped to use debit cards, credit cards or Walmart gift cards as a payment source.

Walmart said its mobile app is among the top-three retail apps in the Apple and Google app stores and is used by 22 million people each month for refilling pharmacy prescriptions, checking in for pickup of an order made online, finding items inside a store and other tasks.

“E-commerce brought the stores to the Web and now mobile is bringing the Web to the store,” Ashe said.

“Walmart made a strategic decision to design Walmart Pay to work with almost any smartphone and accept almost any payment type,” said Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services at Walmart U.S. “Walmart Pay is not about improving payment just for payment’s sake. It’s about how we use payment to create a better shopping experience for our customers in our stores. When we looked across all the solutions out there, many are limited to certain types of phones, certain operating systems or certain payment types. And in some instances, all three of those constraints are placed upon a customer. We needed a solution that offered mobile payment to as many customers as possible.”