Walmart Enters Banking With Fintech Cover

A week or so ago headlines from CNBC, The Wall Street Journal to outlets like TechCrunch and Bankingdive screamed something like "Walmart Jumps into Fintech with Ribbit." Wait a minute...back up...Let's be clear, Walmart is jumping into banking.

Yes, "Fintech" sounds much more intriguing, but the truth is banking is its target. With 90% of Americans living within a mere 10 miles of Walmart, the retail juggernaut knows exactly what it's doing. Take Walmart Health for example; the venture is already impacting the healthcare market in everyone one of its 16 locations around the country. In its healthcare venture, Walmart is successfully exploiting the complacent, lethargic healthcare market, not necessarily through technology (though that's important), but convenience and service.

If Amazon makes it easy to do business digitally (by the way Amazon has done about $10 Billion in small business loans over recent years), then Walmart wants to make it easy to do business online and off. Makes sense, people go to Walmart, they can drop off their dog for a vet visit, shop or see a loan officer about a home mortgage or pay bills through the new app.

What Walmart fully recognizes first and foremost is that this isn't really about technology, but customer access and behavior. It's not about apps, but executing simple ideas relative to customer experience and brand recognition.

The good news is there are real opportunities for banks as Walmart moves in this direction. Recently, KeyCorp has announced its setting up a digital bank for doctors as one way of carving out the market and opportunistically competing in niches that can be profitable. But most of all, Banks sit on troves of client data that can be mobilized simply if only harnessed appropriately. This isn't the big data ocean...in fact, I find big data in this case largely useless, what's more compelling is smart data that can be used to identify opportunities, and implement simple strategies using smart and cost-efficient marketing tools, that allows you to "own" the customer, which Amazon and Walmart do very well.

I am actually excited about this development for banks and financial institutions, and heck...even for competing apps. Just remember what happened at the beginning of the COVID crisis in the US, people moved their dollars in droves to recognizable bank brands because they felt safer with those brands. And therein lies the opportunity to strengthen your bank's brand by thinking about marketing from your customer's experience which will not only inform messaging but customer guide behavior...and it's always about customer behavior.