Originally announced back in July 2021, Woolworths is launching their own digital wallet called “Everyday Pay“, tied in with the Everyday Rewards loyalty program.
Everyday Pay is powered by ‘Wpay‘ – or Woolworths’ stand-alone payments business.
After a relatively slow rollout and testing time (and being teased by those QR codes on the Woolies eftpos terminals), it looks like it’s ready for prime time, with yesterday’s App Store app update proudly mentioning in the ‘What’s New’ section;
To ensure you’re always getting the best experience, we make regular updates to the app. In this release, you can now:
– Pay and collect points in one scan in-store at Woolworths with Everyday Pay.
(Android can’t be too far away, even if it’s not mentioned in the Play Store update notes)
So what is Everyday Pay, and do you need it? Wonder no more; just read on!
As a digital wallet (a little similar to Apple Pay or Google Pay), it’s another way to pay for things – in this case, your groceries or anything Woolworths sells (and probably Big W, BWS and more eventually).
For Everyday Pay – that’s bank cards (American Express, Mastercard or Visa credit/debit/prepaid cards) or gift cards.
And it probably goes without saying – when you pay with Everyday Pay, your Everyday Rewards is automatically added so you keep earning points and redeeming offers.
(Oh, there’s also a ‘Gifting’ store too, to send eGift Cards to friends and family (if you hadn’t already sorted that using an app like Prezzee))
Fire up the Everyday Rewards app, and if your account is good to go, you’ll see a new “Tap to get started” message above the middle ‘Card’ tab.
Flip through the quick ‘how to’, agree to the T&Cs, and then it’s time to add a bank card.
Punch in your bank card number (sorry, no Apple Pay here), and that’s your first payment method sorted. From here, you can add extra bank cards, or start adding gift cards.
Once you’ve set up Everyday Pay, the ‘Card’ tab will be transformed into the ‘Pay’ tab; with the new ‘Gifting’ store button to the left, and the ‘Wallet’ option to the right (where your saved bank cards and gift cards live).
The Gifting Store is just another…. gift card store.
So, time to shop! When you arrive at Woolworths, you’ll see these QR codes; either on the self serve screen, or on the eftpos terminal. You can either scan it from your favourite QR code scanner (eg, the iOS Camera app), or open up the Everyday Rewards app and press the scan button in there.
Point it at the QR code, it’ll connect, and you’re sorted. The Everyday Rewards app will show what payment method you’re using, and a confirmation screen when it goes through (with the amount charged, and the method used).
As is standard with shopping at Woolworths, Big W, etc – you get a digital receipt in the app too.
But so far we’ve just touched on bank cards – and really, Everyday Pay is definitely not as quick or easy as using Apple Pay to 1) Add your Everyday Rewards card, and then 2) Pay.
What makes Everyday Pay a little more interesting; you can add in your gift cards (starting with the Woolworths Supermarket and WISH gift cards at launch, with more promised to come) and use them to pay – and keep track of your balances too. While the Woolworths Money app kinda did this – the keeping track of balances – it was a pain to shop with the cards.
Open the ‘Wallet’ section in Everyday Pay, tap Gift Cards, and from here you can add your existing gift cards. The balances will then show in the Everyday Rewards app – and now for the cool part – when you use Everyday Pay, it’ll automatically (sorry, Woolworths call it ‘automagically’) use the gift cards first (you can turn this off, as mentioned earlier) and then your bank card for any remaining balances.
As Everyday Pay can only be used in store at Woolworths (not at Big W, BWS, Online, etc), you can still store your gift cards in the Everyday Rewards app – and still pull out the gift card barcode or gift card numbers so you can redeem them somewhere that isn’t a Woolworths store.
One thing that hasn’t changed is your $10 off a shop with all those hard earned Everyday Rewards points – you still have the option to redeem them before using Everyday Pay.
There’s no change here; you can’t dip into that rewards balance with any amount you want – it’s still $10 increments with Everyday Pay.
Everyday Pay is an interesting start for Woolworths – but as someone who usually taps with Apple Pay, there’s not a lot of value here (plus now I have to get my phone out to scan the QR code instead of just tapping my Apple Watch) for me right now.
Everyday Pay is also limited to Woolworths right now – you can’t use it in Big W, BWS, Dan Murphy’s, and so on.
If you love your gift cards, then there’s probably a lot more value here – it just happens automagically when redeeming them instead of having to juggle cards, keep track of balances, and manually pound in those card numbers.
Oh, and no – you can’t use those gift cards in Everyday Pay to pay for other gift cards like good deals on Apple Gift Card