Walmart's Long March into Payments
July 15, 2016 1:00 PM
Walmart Pay is the culmination of years of efforts that Walmart has put into building its brand as a trusted provider of payments. In addition to its new mobile wallet, Walmart has been involved in numerous innovative projects to help its customers move money.
GoBank
Walmart serves as the physical footprint and exclusive distributor of Green Dot's digital checking account GoBank. Its stores allow GoBank customers to make deposits for free at any register; other stores charge $4.95 for the same service.
Reload @ the Register
Walmart also helped Green Dot test "Reload @ the Register," a technology that allows prepaid card users to add funds to their accounts without buying a separate reload card.
Walmart-2-Walmart
The "Walmart-2-Walmart" service, launched in 2014 with Ria Money Transfer, lets U.S. shoppers send domestic transfers to one another for a fee. The service targets unbanked consumers, but is more limited than services from MoneyGram, which also operates in Walmart stores.
Bluebird
Walmart developed the Bluebird prepaid card with American Express, built on Amex's Serve digital wallet platform. The card's low fees made it a strong contender against other prepaid marketers and traditional banks.
CurrentC
Though the CurrentC wallet never rolled out nationwide, it had some initial success in motivating many of the nation's retailers to become more active mobile developers. Its exclusivity terms also briefly untied the retail industry against Apple Pay.
Pushing Back
Walmart has cast itself as an agent for change in the retail community, most recently through its multiple disputes with Visa that protest card processing costs, routing structures and other factors that retailers may not always have a way to control.
