By
Steve Muchoki
December 20th, 2023
Walmart and Green Dot have created a new fintech accelerator called Tailfin to encourage startups to join this industry.
In what seems like a match made in heaven retail giant Walmart and financial services company Green Dot have both decided to extend their partnership beyond the Walmart MoneyCard Program and to build an accelerator that will enable fintech startups to thrive.
The retail giant disclosed this yesterday and indicated that the focus of the accelerator would be towards retail products that would in their own words “sit at the intersection of retail…shopping and consumer financial services,”.
The accelerator is called Tailfin Labs LLC which refers to fintech and retail. The accelerator’s primary aim is to encourage fintech startups to be able to develop products and services that solve the many problems that both companies in the retail industry and shoppers also face as well.
The great thing about this opportunity is that both parties involved in Tailfin Labs have great success stories in their sectors of business. Green Dot, for instance, has been able to create financial solutions for consumers who don’t wish to use traditional banking services due to one reason or the other. Walmart, on the other hand, has been able to single-handedly redefine retailing for more than fifty years.
It also appears that the products and services which will be developed by the startups will most likely be deployed on Greendot’s Software-as-a-service platform (SAAS). This, of course, will allow for easy entry into the market place in a rapidly changing industry of which time is of the essence.
This also allows for faster inclusion into the fintech industry as any product coming with Green Dot’s seal of approval is expected to be of the world-class quality. Steve Serit who is the founder and CEO of Green Dot said in a statement:
“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.”
“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,” continued he.
This, of course, indicates the kind of innovations that are occurring in the fintech space today. Green Dot and Walmart entered a formal working and business relationship over one decade ago in 2006 when they created the Walmart Money Card which functions just like a bank account and is even insured by the US FDIC. The MoneyCard also comes with great features such as cashback rewards, direct rewards, online bill payments and so on.
While it may look like just a blip on the screen, the inclusion of one of the biggest retailers in the world in the fintech solutions development process indicates that fintech is the big industry of the next decade.