Wal-Mart working to fix gift card problems

If you were lucky enough to receive a Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) gift card for Christmas this year, you may want to wait a few days before attempting to use it at your local location. The world's largest retailer is having a problem processing gift cards this year, according to Wal-Mart officials.

Wal-Mart is laying the blame on a third party processing verification service that was producing errors when gift cards were used as payments at nationwide Wal-Mart locations. The result was delays in gift card verifications, which naturally caused some gift card users not to be able and use their cards.

Although Wal-Mart is known for its state-of-the-art IT systems that run its global logistics and replenishment systems, this one falls in the lap of a partner, which apparently was not closely monitoring quality in the post-holiday rush when it came to gift card usage.

Wal-Mart said that it is "working with the supplier to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and we apologize for the inconvenience to our customers." Mistakes happen, although the retailer said it could not provide any additional details on the matter.