Walmart Partners with Western Union to Enable Cross-Border Transfers

Walmart (WMT) is bolstering its offerings in nearly 4,700 stores across the U.S. through its integration of Western Union’s (WU) services. The retailer has teamed up with payment giant Western Union to make it easy for customers to transfer funds across the U.S. and to more than 200 countries.

In January of this year, the two companies announced this planned agreement, which they are now launching.

“Being able to send much-needed funds to a loved one, especially after a year like we’ve had, is more important than ever. We’re proud to extend our commitment to providing choice and value by offering Western Union services to our customers,” said Julia Unger, Vice President of Financial Services at Walmart.

Over the years, Walmart has partnered with various financial service providers. Thanks to this partnership with Western Union, Walmart customers will be able to have their funds transferred within minutes across more than 550,000 retail locations or billions of bank accounts worldwide. (See Walmart stock analysis on TipRanks)

Following Walmart’s impressive Q1 results boosted by strong discretionary sales, BMO Capital analyst Kelly Bania has reiterated a Buy rating on the stock.

Bania stated, “Despite potential for continued upside in 2021, our 2022 EPS is largely unchanged. Longer term, we continue to see meaningful improvements to profitability on Ecommerce, supported in part by WMT’s high-margin initiatives.”

Bania has a $170 price target on the stock, implying 19.79% upside potential to current levels.

Consensus among analysts on Wall Street is a Strong Buy based on 15 Buy and 4 Hold ratings. The average analyst price target of $167.24 implies 17.9% upside potential to current levels.

WMT scores a 3 out of 10 on TipRanks’ Smart Score rating system, implying it is likely to underperform market expectations.