Walmart Teams With Ria To Offer International Money Transfers In US Stores

Walmart is expanding its flat-fee money transfer services to include an international money transfer marketplace serving all 4,700 U.S. Walmart stores, the company said in a press release on Monday (Nov. 4).

“When we launched Walmart2Walmart and Walmart2World, our goal was to create a platform with money transfer principals that enabled customers to have more choice when transferring money to friends and family around the country and the world,” said Wilbert Noronha, vice president, financial services, Walmart U.S.

In collaboration with its money transfer principals MoneyGram and Ria, Walmart will offer customers more choices for payout methods and locations as well as competitive foreign exchange rates.

“MoneyGram and Walmart have worked closely together for over two decades and have innovated to provide the world’s leading money transfer service for consumers in the United States,” said MoneyGram Chief Executive Officer Alex Holmes. “Walmart’s vision of creating a marketplace for financial services will benefit consumers through pricing and payout options, and we believe that our leading brand and competitive foreign exchange rates will help drive the future success of the marketplace.”

Walmart estimates that customers who have used Walmart2Walmart and Walmart2World saved an estimated $1 billion in fees since 2014.

“We are excited Walmart has chosen to expand its relationship with Ria in their mission to provide customers more choice and the most economical and transparent services at the best price,” said Juan Bianchi, chief executive officer of Euronet’s Money Transfer Segment. “This expanded product offering reflects our great relationship with Walmart and our joint mission to offer customers more choice at a better value when sending money abroad.”

Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of Walmart Services and Digital Acceleration, told PYMNTS in a recent interview that “The next big thing in retail is the integration of FinTech and retail tech. In order to deliver something like that, you’ll have to get a lot closer to others.”

That means, for instance, more cooperation and collaboration around such things as application programming interfaces (APIs), and more effort when it comes to accelerators, among other tasks.