Wal-Mart is engaged in a major battle with the US Banks at Senate hearings.

Wal-Mart can cancel banks’ store leases
Wal-Mart is seeking FDIC approval to open a special type of bank in Utah called an industrial bank. A range of opponents, from local banks to farmers to unions, testified for three days last month that Wal-Mart was really aiming to get into general banking services and argued this would be bad for local economies

Wal-Mart is interested in ensuring it controls the costs along its entire value chain, a smart trend that all companies think about, such as Home Depot.

Jane J. Thompson, Wal-Mart’s head of financial services, told the FDIC the company wants an in-house bank solely to process millions of credit and debit card and electronic check payments in its nearly 4,000 U.S. stores.

Wal-Mart has declined to put a dollar amount on the savings, but has said that by handling its own payment processing, the company would save the fraction of a penny per transaction it currently pays two large banks for the service — adding up to millions of dollars a year.

Relevance to Bankwatch:
Systemic changes to the financial industry are happening, and Banks should be encouraging those changes, and adapting to compete in the new world, not resorting to legal protection, which at best will be temporary.

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