Walmart’s OnePay Employee Share Repurchase Hints at $4 Billion Valuation

OnePay reached that valuation, up from $2.5 billion in 2024, after repurchasing shares from employees, Bloomberg News reported Friday (Jan. 9), citing a source familiar with the matter.

As the report noted, OnePay was formed from the combination of two smaller FinTechs, with the aim of establishing an all-in-one financial app. The company has flourished thanks to its distribution partnership with Walmart, growing to upwards of 3 million monthly active users.

The company’s offerings now include a credit card, cryptocurrency trading, a buy now, pay later (BNPL) product and an investing platform.

OnePay also recently joined Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), saying it will help make agentic payments more secure, transparent and useful. OnePay will be a credential provider in AP2 and will help define how payment methods are stored, chosen and used by artificial intelligence (AI) agents, the company said in December.

Writing about OnePay’s work with Walmart last year, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster noted that the companies can use their connectivity with brands to disrupt pure-play FinTechs.

“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,” Webster wrote. 

“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.”

More recently, PYMNTS examined how OnePay’s pending launch of its crypto functionality is an example of how Walmart is “testing how emerging financial tools can be integrated into everyday commerce without requiring customers to leave a familiar ecosystem.”

That same report looked at how Walmart is both adopting artificial intelligence tools while embedding AI leadership at the strategic decision-making level.

Days earlier, the retail giant had announced it was embedding advertising into its AI shopping agent, Sparky, “reflecting a growing confidence in conversational commerce,” PYMNTS wrote.

Instead of seeing AI as a utility, Walmart is treating it as a new interface, one that can guide discovery in more natural ways than search bars or category menus.

“This past week also saw Walmart add an AI specialist, Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra, to its board of directors, a move that combines governance with strategic direction at a moment when every major retailer is grappling with how artificial intelligence should shape product recommendations, personalization, supply chain automation and customer engagement,” the report added.