BELLEVUE, Wash. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has partnered with discount brokerage ShareBuilder Corp. to offer low-cost investment services, marking the retailer's initial expansion of its financial-services offerings since abandoning its bid to start an industrial bank, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
ShareBuilder won't share revenue from the service with Wal-Mart because of securities regulations prohibiting such arrangements, said Jeff Seely, ShareBuilder's chairman and chief executive, the publication reported. Wal-Mart introduced the service, titled Wal-Mart Easy Investing by ShareBuilder, early this month with a link on its Web site. It soon will begin promoting the service in its U.S. stores, too.
ShareBuilder's Wal-Mart service differs little from its standard offerings, with lower prices in a few instances if a client anticipates making only a handful of predetermined stock trades each month, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those costs range from $4 for one, preset transaction per month to a package of 20 trades per month for $20, with extra trades costing $2 each. ShareBuilder doesn't charge a fee for money-market deposits.
A Wal-Mart spokesman described the retailer's ShareBuilder service as a pilot project, the publication reported.
ShareBuilder counts a number of credit unions among its clients.
