ICYMI: New details emerge about Walmart’s fintech startup venture

Walmart is making progress on laying out the vision and focus for its new fintech venture, a new report suggests.

Why should we care?
Walmart’s plans for a fintech startup were revealed earlier this year, with the retailer filing a patent for the initiative in April. The filing offered some clues about the types of fintech offerings the retailer may launch in the future, including debit cards and credit cards, payments (including mobile payments and “virtual currency transaction services for others”), banking, and lending. The recent report, citing unnamed sources, stated that the Walmart fintech venture has hundreds of millions of dollars in commitments from its backers, and that acquisitions are a likely route to help grow the business instead of building technologies in-house. Walmart’s fintech startup – a joint venture with Ribbit Capital – may result in a new company that may launch mobile payments. Buying a startup neobank that offers consumer bank accounts is not off the table, but the company reportedly does not intend to apply for a banking license. This isn’t Walmart’s first move into bank territory. The company’s attempt to buy Franklin Bank of California was blocked in 2002, and a 2005 application for an industrial loan company charter was withdrawn two years later.