After a failed effort in 2005, Walmart has made a second foray into the market for the unbanked. Regulatory complications stymied its last attempt, motivating Walmart to look for a strategic partner, rather than handling the service itself. It found one in GreenDot’s GoBank, which is a simple, cheap, online alternative to a traditional bank.

Photo from the Fiscal Times

Such an alliance appears mutually beneficial, allowing Walmart to circumvent the regulations of becoming a bank, and giving GreenDot an advantage in acquiring customers. Online banks lower overhead, allowing the offer low fee accounts by avoiding an expensive network of branches, but in doing so sacrifice visibility and convenience. Walmart’s retail network is omnipresent and established, with around 4200 locations–only 1100 fewer than Bank of America. This allows GreenDot to maintain its cost advantage, whilst minimizing its visibility shortcomings. Furthermore, Walmart is incentivized to push GoBank’s adoption, which makes GreenDot’s position in this partnership even stronger. The only uncertainty is what portion of revenue GreenDot had to sacrifice in exchange for the accommodation, which determines to a degree how beneficial this will be for each of the two partners, along with how many accounts are activated as a result.

In summation, this appears to be a partnership with the potential to help each side meet their needs, as one increases its presence in the consumer’s mind–without using capital–and the other avoids the regulatory hurdles preventing it from making money from the billions of transactions that occur at its locations annually.