Walmart And Green Dot Are Launching A Fintech Accelerator

By Dan Anderson • Nov 3, 2019
  • Walmart and Green Dot announced it entered an agreement to extend their MoneyCard partnership and launch a new fintech accelerator

Walmart and Green Dot announced it has been entered into two new and distinct agreements. The first agreement involves the Walmart MoneyCard program and the second agreement involves a new fintech accelerator.

Green Dot will continue to serve as the issuing bank and program manager for the Walmart MoneyCard program for an additional period of 7 years going into effect on January 1, 2020. And it will replace the current agreement — which would have expired in May 2020. Ever since the Walmart MoneyCard program launched in 2006, it has grown into the largest retailer exclusive prepaid account program in the United States.

Plus Walmart and Green Dot have agreed to jointly establish a new fintech accelerator called “TailFin Labs, LLC” with a mission to develop innovative products, services, and technologies.

The Walmart majority-owned fintech accelerator intends to focus on its efforts on developing tech-enabled solutions that seamlessly integrate omnichannel retail shopping and financial services for consumers and businesses.

“Over the years, Walmart has brought to market many innovative industry-defining financial services offerings to serve our customers – including several introduced through the Walmart MoneyCard program managed by Green Dot,” said Daniel Eckert, Senior Vice President of the Walmart Services and Digital Acceleration. “With this expanded relationship, and by leveraging Walmart’s footprint and existing offerings with Green Dot’s cutting-edge capabilities, we’ll be uniquely positioned to offer an unmatched set of customer experiences that sit at the nexus of omni-channel retail and tech-enabled financial services.”

And the accelerator aims to continue to expand upon Walmart’s current suite of omnichannel retail shopping tools by uniquely leveraging industry-leading fintech solutions wrapped around and built on Green Dot’s industry-leading “Banking-as-a-Service” (BaaS) platform.

“Green Dot is extremely proud and honored to both extend our MoneyCard partnership for many years and to additionally enter into an entirely new equity partnership with Walmart in the creation of a fintech accelerator,” added Steve Streit, founder and CEO of Green Dot. “We believe the combination of Walmart’s unmatched retail ecosystem with Green Dot’s innovative and highly flexible BaaS platform, which enables the world’s largest technology and consumer brands to address their consumers with bespoke financial products and services, has the opportunity to create and bring to market many new and exciting innovations over the years to come.”