Retailers happy for you to open your wallet wider to their banking services

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/02/23/3063243/retailers-happy-for-you-to-open.html

Retailers happy for you to open your wallet wider to their banking services
By BILL VIRGIN
Staff writer
February 23, 2014 Updated 21 hours ago

There’s a lot you can learn by reading the ads in the newspaper, even if you’re not planning on buying anything.

For example, by pairing a careful reading of a newspaper advertisement from a regional retailing chain with some history of the banking industry, you can come up with some insights into the trends and future of retailers offering financial services to consumers.

Allow us to demonstrate, with an ad from Fred Meyer, the Portland,-based food-and-merchandise retailer that some years back bought the local grocery chain QFC, and later was itself subsumed by Cincinnati-based grocery giant Kroger. Fred Meyer placed a full-color, full-page ad for what it calls money services — check-cashing, bill-paying and money transfers. The company also is promoting a store-branded prepaid debit Visa card.

None of these is an innovative product or service, nor are they particularly unique to one retailer, as we shall see shortly. Nor is the most notable feature of the ad the fact that Fred Meyer is targeting check-cashing with a low promotional rate, although that is of interest given the ongoing controversy over the cost of such services, particularly for the unbanked.