Sales that year were $975,000, PBS’ Frontline reported. It’s a figure that Walmart now makes every 46 seconds, according to a post on social platform X by Ticker Take founder Jon Erlichman.
During the past 63 years, few things have remained as constant — and overlooked — as payments. Long regarded as a back-end function or cost center, the point of sale (POS) has traditionally been about utility and efficiency. Ring up the transaction, authorize the payment, and move on.
But that view is changing.
Video game commerce firm Xsolla announced in a June 26 press release that it is partnering with Affirm to bring buy now, pay later (BNPL) to video game storefronts. The move shows that retailers large and small, digital and brick-and-mortar, are embracing embedded finance and the potential of payments as a lever for growth.
“At Affirm, we’re reshaping how people pay by putting transparency and personalization at the center of every transaction,” Pat Suh, senior vice president of revenue at Affirm, said in the release.
Businesses have realized that payments touch every part of the customer journey. Walmart announced in June that FinTech OnePay, backed by Walmart, is teaming with Synchrony to launch a credit card program. The program, set to roll out this fall, will be integrated into the OnePay app and available to Walmart customers. It includes a general-purpose card, which will serve as the program’s signature card and be available to use anywhere Mastercard is accepted, and a private-label card, which will be exclusively for Walmart purchases.
With the convergence of data, customer experience, FinTech innovation and loyalty programs, retailer-driven payments optionality and financial services are emerging not just as a function of commerce, but as a fundamental enabler of brand differentiation and revenue expansion.
From Cost Center to Strategic Differentiator
Payments are moving from a stealth driver of customer loyalty to a front-and-center strategy for customer retention and lifetime value extraction. This shift is driving greater investment in payment orchestration platforms, tokenization and customer vaulting systems, allowing merchants to deliver a seamless experience while unlocking deeper insights into purchase behavior.
Coming into 2025, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster detailed that FinTechs and other digital-only players would have to gird for turbulence as retailers sharpened their own focus on creating payments-driven customer ecosystems.
“[OnePay], with Walmart, can use the connectivity they have with brands to disrupt the economics of how pure-play FinTechs make their money,” Webster wrote in January. “That can become the basis for a disruptive business model that doesn’t rely on investor checks to cover up shortfalls in positive unit economics. The sheer scale of their customer base and supplier relationships, and the ability to connect purchases with offers and financing, is unmatched by any except for one other retailer — Amazon.”
OnePay “looks like it could be a winner, and highly disruptive,” she added.
Outside of owning the customer relationship end-to-end, another reason retailers are turning to payments as a growth lever is due to data. Traditional retail environments have long struggled with siloed systems. POS data, online shopping behavior and loyalty program usage have historically all been scattered. But by consolidating payment rails and unifying back-end systems, retailers can achieve a 360-degree view of the customer.
“You can pull in everything from historical transaction information, you can pull in things like product categories that consumers are interested in and the frequency that they’re purchasing in those categories,” Dani Kenady, vice president of operations at Affinity Solutions, told PYMNTS in an interview published Tuesday (July 1).
This deep insight allows retailers to understand customer segments, such as whether they should be classified as a “luxury buyer” or a “budget buyer,” and to identify patterns including cart abandonment or cross-category spending, Kenady said.
See also: eCommerce Growth Tops Overall Retail Sales Even as Consumers Prioritize Everyday Spend
Unlocking Omnichannel Agility
We are entering an era of embedded commerce, where the lines between shopping, banking and loyalty are blurring. Retailers who embrace payments as a strategic lever position themselves not just as places to buy products, but as platforms for financial empowerment.
PYMNTS Intelligence’s “How the World Does Digital” series has documented that mobile wallets are tied to 35% of online and 21% of in-store transactions. Most consumers also use digital banking apps. Additional PYMNTS Intelligence estimated that BNPL transactions have hit the $175 billion mark, garnering enthusiasm across all income levels.
In this new era, success will hinge on the ability to create integrated, seamless and data-informed experiences. Payments will no longer be an afterthought. They will be at the core of the customer relationship and the business model.
