Talk about competition
March 19, 2010 | alternatives, best practices, industry | Comments (0)Wal-mart is expanding its financial services. From the story:
With plenty of Americans still struggling financially, Walmart says it is stepping up its offerings to the “unbanked” — people unable to afford basic checking accounts — and will open 500 more Walmart MoneyCenters this year. First introduced last August, the concept is currently in 1,000 stores. With the additional rollouts, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer says they will be in roughly 40% of more than 3,700 U.S. stores.
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“Right now, Walmart is competing with a variety of different types of institutions, including payday lenders and check cashers, and anyone in the money transfer business. And in some sense, there is competition for that consumer now because banks are trying to do a better job with outreach to the underbanked and unbanked — they, too, recognize that it’s a growth segment, and that a lot of those consumers will eventually be good candidates for the products and services banks offer.”
