Wal-Mart Lenders?

Wal-Mart and Google just may take over the world at the rate they are expanding their businesses and grasps! Okay, so maybe that’s a little extreme, but did you hear the news that Wal-Mart will be introducing some banking services and a debit card? Not far behind is the effort to offer mortgages and other loans. Hmmm, imagine paying your mortgage to the bank of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart isn’t actually opening a bank, but they will be offering check-cashing services, some bill payments and other services.

Quoted from NY Times

…wider offerings, like home equity loans and mortgages, which could turn Wal-Mart into a significant force in the banking world. Jane Thompson, the president of Wal-Mart financial services, called the prepaid cards and money centers “foundational products” that the retailer would build upon…Given Wal-Mart’s penchant for squeezing costs out of every business it enters — from oil changes to prescription drugs — the move is expected to jolt the financial services business

The introduction of such services represents an end-run around the federal government, which last year denied Wal-Mart a charter to open a bank amid fears that it would crush smaller financial institutions….The new products, like the prepaid Visa card, will be offered through third-party partners, allowing Wal-Mart to sell bank-like services without a government license

With Wal-Mart looking to work around government licensing, they are brazenly saying, we will find a way to do this because we want to….and so they did.

What do you think of this? Do you think it’s a good thing that it may change the industry, or do you think that it’s getting a little scary that Wal-Mart is touching and changing everything. With rapidly expanding Google and Wal-Mart, God help us if they ever combine! They may very well run the world sooner than we think!