AP: Wal-Mart Applies to Create a Utah Bank

[mcscajun]

SALT LAKE CITY - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has applied to establish a Utah industrial bank that would process credit card, debit card and electronic check transactions from its retail locations, the bank's chief said.

The world's largest retailer now uses a third-party processor for the transactions. Handling the work itself would save a significant amount of money, Alan Whitchurch, the bank's president and chief executive, said Monday He declined to say how much money would be saved.

(snip)

Critics fear Wal-Mart could drive smaller banks and credit unions out of business.

"The largest company in the world would certainly have the financial resources to drive other competitors out of the market," said Ronald K. Ence, vice president at the Independent Community Bankers of America.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050719/ap_on_bi_ge/wal_mart_bank_1

[SpiralHawk]

1. "All your material wants are belong to us." - Walmart

Just give us all your money and you can have your material desires filled (albeit with really shoddy shit manufactured in East Dumbwank, somewhere far from America).

[Deja Q]

2. Where's the government to put in controls?

[FloridaPat]

3. That is not your basic bank. All it would do would process credit cards.

And they would save a ton of money. There is a 2-4 cent charge every time a cc is used. That's the fee to use the CC system. Plus a 2-7% charge on top of that. That's the actual charge for handling cc. Nice business huh? I've never heard of an industrial bank before. That's a strange term. Normally it would be a cc processing financial institution.

[napi21]

4. Sometime in the late 70's, the co. I worked for made a deal with our bank

so we could process our own credit card info in-house. That was before electronic readers, so we actuually entered the data directly from the paper CC receipts. They agreed, and reduced our fees from 3.5% down to 1%. We saved millions each year!

The reason I don't like the idea of WM doing this is because it gives them yet ANOTHER big advantage over their competition! Of course, it also opens them up to possible law suits if someone there mishandles the customer's confidential info, but I'm sure they're willing oto take that chance!

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

5. Utah ???

I'm supprised it's not in the Caribbeans(?) for more tax-free business!

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

6. Too soon

Off-shoring money won't be until after established in Utah.