Walmart has long believed that credit card processing fees are too high, so by owning the consumer payment experience, Walmart is in the driver’s seat and can control which payment choices are available to consumers in the future. This could mark the beginning of the end for CurrentC, an industry-wide payment system that was created for MCX restaurants and retailers, including Walmart, to utilize as a single payment solution. While Walmart will still continue its partnership with MCX, Walmart Pay will be the company’s main focus. The introduction of Walmart Pay is significant to the payments market as it sends the message that Walmart is seemingly departing from the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium and its pending CurrentC mobile payment platform, which has been plagued by numerous delays and concerns over the underlying technology platform. Following closely in Walmart’s footsteps is Target, with a recent speculation of a similar mobile wallet app in the works. As one of the first US retailers to branch out on its own and create a merchant branded payment and loyalty application, Walmart is paving the way for other retailers to simplify payments and provide new ways of enhancing the consumer shopping experience. It might just be right.The upcoming launch of Walmart’s mobile payments service, Walmart Pay, is one of many signs that the mobile payments landscape is shifting in a curious direction. Ossia’s betting that with today’s announcement, it’s got a substantial leg up. (Just this week, Energous announced that it has received regulatory approval in 100 countries.) And Energous - which VentureBeat exclusively reported has been working with Apple since 2014 - is commercializing transmitters that “can do both contact-based and non-contact-based … charging” and send power through the air to devices between 10cm and roughly 30 feet away. Powercast, a startup founded in 2003, has an at-a-distance wireless power system that’s available in the form of a development kit. Ossia has raised more than $35 million, to date, but it’s got plenty of competition. The company’s on track to launch a proof of concept by the end of this year. “It’s the entry point to building out our ecosystem … expect to have more pilots next year.”
“Our broader retail internet of things strategy is signing up different ecosystem partners,” Woo said. But the Walmart deal gives Cota a strong foundation on which to grow. Ossia’s working with wireless carriers, battery manufacturers, and a number of companies in other verticals. There’s a lot of interesting use cases there,” Woo said. About 324 million people walk through Walmart’s doors every day, and in the U.S., 90 percent of people live within 15 miles of a store.
If all goes well, its stores present an opportunity to demonstrate Cota to the public for the very first time. Walmart’s unique power needs aren’t the only reason Ossia saw the retailer as a great fit.
On average, annual electricity bills total $190,000 per location, according to Greentech Media. Walmart operates more than 150 distribution centers, some of which contain battery-operated sensors, wearables, and inventory tracking and retrieval robots. It’s not just the retail environment that poses a challenge. “Running wires is costly, restrictive, and hard to manage.
“ESLs currently require batteries or wiring,” Woo explained. Walmart has roughly 11,800 locations in 28 countries, operating under 59 different names. And those stores contain lots of battery-powered barcode scanners, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), security cameras, electronic beacons, displays, and other internet of things devices. Preston Woo, VP of corporate development and business alliances at Ossia, said a retail setting was a natural fit for Cota: “Walmart a lot of different needs for wireless power, and not just in stores.” Future designs will take advantage of more powerful 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz hardware, the latter of which will enable Ossia to squeeze more antennas onto a same-sized transmitter. When a device starts running low on power, those antennas emit microseconds-long beacon signals that reflect off of walls and other obstacles until they reach a transmitter, which triangulates the beams to pinpoint the transceiver’s location and sends power along those paths.Ī single transmitter can send about 1 watt to a smartphone sitting 3-6 feet away, Ossia claims, while its prototype Cota Tile can charge devices up to 30 feet away (or 50 feet with two transmitters working in tandem). Instead, it taps thousands of antennas embedded in transmitters that communicate with compatible transceivers. If you aren’t familiar with Ossia’s Cota platform, here’s a quick rundown: Unlike most “wireless” charging tech on the market, Cota doesn’t require line-of-sight access, plugs, or charging pads.