Wal-Mart, GE Consumer Finance and Discover Financial Services, a business unit of Morgan Stanley, have revealed plans to launch a new credit card on the Discover Network. The new card, Wal-Mart Discover, will be issued by GE Consumer Finance and will be available to customers by March 2005.
It’s a great card for Wal-Mart customers shopping in our store and on walmart.com, said Jane Thompson, president of Wal-Mart Financial Services. It has no annual fee, can be used both inside and outside of Wal-Mart stores and offers our customers up to 1% back from GE on all purchases. The customer benefits are a direct result of our commitment to be the low cost leader.
We’re excited about this new opportunity and the ability to reach more Wal-Mart customers through an expanded credit card program, said Mark Begor, president and CEO, GE Consumer Finance – Americas.
This expands our important partnership with Wal-Mart and allows us to offer multiple credit products to Wal-Mart customers, including the Wal-Mart card and now, the new Wal-Mart Discover that will offer more choices to Wal-Mart shoppers and help grow Wal-Mart sales.
The tie-up is the latest collaboration between a credit card issuer and retail and banking institutions since the US Supreme Court effectively opened the sector up, by deciding last year to uphold a ruling that Visa and MasterCard were acting unlawfully when barring partner banks from using other credit card issuers.