{{img-align-right:1}} At Walmart, we help people around the world save money and live better – anytime and anywhere. Customers are busier than ever, so we’re innovating and leveraging technology to save them time as well as money. Each week, we serve nearly 265 million customers who visit our more than 11,200 stores under 55 banners in 27 countries and eCommerce websites. Walmart’s unwavering commitment to saving people money is why millions of customers trust Walmart. We believe that by staying aggressive, being nimble, moving with speed and taking risks, we can create a better experience for our customers whether they are looking for everyday items, buying a TV in our stores or sending money to loved ones around the world.
Walmart is excited by the opportunity to work with startups as a way to stay ahead of the curve and collaborate on innovation as it happens. Walmart sees this chance as beneficial not only because it affords insight into emerging trends and consumer needs in FinTech, but also because it provides access to companies that are developing next generation capabilities that have the potential to transform our business.
Walmart Select™ is a platform that enables customized pre-paid card programs that limit spending to certain products or categories. This payments capability helps companies create programs to reward employees, drive targeted sales, or foster relationships between customers and brands. The goal of this program will be to more effectively present customers with personalized merchandise in Walmart stores and online. This could range from single items to entire departments or categories. Items could be identified to correspond to certain activities and customer interests. Walmart service providers could potentially have great flexibility in promoting their goods to interested customers.
Our challenges are:
- Collaborate with Walmart on how best to tailor existing offerings to better serve our customers with personalized offers and lifestyle programs to help them save money so they can live better.
- Enhance our analytics engine and capabilities tied to our directed spend platform, and potentially leverage additional existing Walmart tools, to make our program more effective.
How will we help startups grow their businesses?
Scale. Over 150 million Americans shop Walmart every week. We want to be ready for all the new ways and new touchpoints that customers will use to engage with our brands and shop with us in the future. With the support of the world’s largest retailer, startups would be uniquely positioned to make a positive impact at a massive, national scale. Let’s work together to test big ideas that will transform the future of commerce through personalized offers and lifestyle programs.
Innovative thinking, leadership through service, and above all, an unwavering commitment to saving people money – it’s what makes us the business we are today and shapes the company we will be tomorrow. We are grounded in our mission and are dedicated to uncovering, inventing and investing in the ideas that will transform the future of commerce. We have the resources to help startups grow and are looking to form relationships that can drive our mutual success.
Beverly Cole, Senior Director of Payment Services at Walmart
Browse the below list to learn more about the challenges issued by MassChallenge FinTech partners for the 2019 program.