HONEY, PICK UP SOME MILK & A HOME MORTGAGE...

Taken from The Wall Street Journal
Wal-Mart Stores, underscoring its continuing push into financial services, has quietly renegotiated the terms of leases with a number of banks operating in its stores, giving Wal-Mart itself the explicit right to offer mortgages, home-equity lines of credit and consumer loans.

A portion of one lease, obtained by Dow Jones Newswires, also gives Wal-Mart (WMT, news, msgs) the ability to offer debit cards and investment and insurance products directly or through a third-party vendor.

In the wording of the new lease, Wal-Mart said it could "offer these products and services in the checkout lanes, at the customer-service desk, through automated-delivery channels, kiosks" or at any other place in the store.

The new lease language comes at a time when Wal-Mart has generated controversy over its repeated efforts to enter the banking business, a push that has drawn fierce opposition from the banking industry, some members of Congress and activist groups.

The Bentonville, Ark., retailer has a pending application to establish an industrial-loan company in Utah but has promised publicly that it won't open retail bank branches.

The company minimized the importance of the changes, as spokesman Kevin Gardner said the lease language didn't "signal anything new."

"We've been offering services like check cashing, money transfers, branded credit cards and bill payments for some time," he said. "Our strategy is to continue to grow our existing financial services to continue to save our customers money so they can live better."

Gardner wouldn't say why the leases also protected Wal-Mart's right to eventually offer items it didn't currently sell, such as mortgages, home-equity loans and investment and insurance products. He also didn't say when the company might roll out any of these products. "We have not made any announcements," he said.