Article in WSJ about Walmart's new money transfer service to rival MoneyGram and WU:
The giant retailer on Thursday unveiled the new service, Walmart-2-Walmart, which will allow customers to send and receive up to $900 at a time at more than 4,000 stores. The new service applies only to payments that are sent and received in the U.S.
...
The service launches April 24. Wal-Mart said the service fees—$4.50 for transfers up to $50 and $9.50 for transfers up to $900—are 50% or more below the cost of existing offerings.
...
MoneyGram said Walmart-2-Walmart's service fees are 25 cents lower than what MoneyGram offers through Wal-Mart for transfers up to $50, and $2 less than MoneyGram's fee on transfers between $50 and $200.
First things first:
1) Yeah, it's super expensive compared to other MS.
2) No word on how to buy these (assume DB/cash only).
I'm not advocating this as the next best thing in MS, but wanted to share this with those who follow the industry as I do.
The key takeaway here is this means WMT is expanding it's financial services footprint, and doing so by reducing the costs of existing methods in the market.
This is GOOD NEWS for us. This is even better news, of course, if you actually use services like MG or WU to send money to family and friends.
You can read the article in full
here.