Free Walmart Gift Cards

A Tempest in a Kiosk

Every few years, retail giant Walmart Stores tries a financial services experiment that produces a ripple of apprehension throughout the banking industry, then fades into the woodwork. In 2005, Walmart issued a credit card with Discover and it rolled out MoneyCenter kiosks, standalone ATM-like machines at which customers can cash checks, pay bills, transfer money and buy money orders; they've now been installed in 1,900 stores. In 2007, it rolled out a prepaid debit card and deployed full-service MoneyCenters — mini in-store banks providing check-cashing, bill-payment and money-order services — in 1,000 stores. In June, Walmart president Jane Thompson showed attendees at the Underbanked Financial Services Forum a merchandising unit that will be added to the outside of MoneyCenter kiosks in a small number of stores. The unit's shelves will display the cards customers can use at the kiosk, such as gift cards and prepaid debit cards. The idea, according to Walmart spokesperson Tara Raddohl, is to allow customers to avoid having to stand on line at a MoneyCenter or a store register to get a new, loaded card. "It's about convenience," she says.

Though various observers have said that bankers should be shaking in their boots over the enhanced kiosks, it's hard to see what the big deal is. "I don't think there's a whole lot of shaking going on," concurs Emmett Higdon, former Forrester analyst and current principal at consultancy Prizm Strategy. "This is a continuation of their financial services strategy." He adds that from a return-on-investment perspective, employee-free kiosks make sense for Wal-Mart.

The value of the kiosks for the retailer comes in their combination with prepaid cards. "When you link traditional MoneyCenter services like bill payment and money transfers with a reloadable prepaid debit card that authenticates consumers, then you start to have a Bank of Walmart, where consumers can deposit cash and add cash to their cards, with much more convenient hours," Higdon says.

One question is, do banks covet this Walmart-oriented customer segment, which tends to be the unbanked and underbanked? "It's long been a segment where the profit potential has not been there for bigger banks, despite the numbers; the market is huge," Higdon says. "We've never had a business model that would allow us to offer a lot of these services and still make money from this population."

The prepaid, check-cashing, bill-payment and money-transfer service businesses have been very profitable for Walmart. But the retailer's real intent is to make repeat customers out of the consumers who use MoneyCenter services, Higdon says. "When you get them used to using a kiosk and it feels like an ongoing relationship with the Bank of Walmart, then it gets scarier," he says.

How the Free Walmart Gift Card Program Works

Article by Elijiah Rampart

There are legitimate online offers out there that will give you a free Walmart gift card just for giving them some personal information. There are also offers that will ask you to complete several promotional offers that can cost you a total of twenty to fifty dollars. You just have to search around to find the best offers. How can these cards be given out for free or no cost is a question we will look at here. Understanding how the process works will give you confidence in participating in them.

First off, know that for almost all of these free gift card programs the retailers themselves are not sponsoring the offer. Walmart does not have a free gift card program, so if someone calls saying they work for Walmart and they want to give you a free gift card hang up the phone right away. The free gift card programs are being sponsored and operated almost always by marketing companies.

The marketing companies want to give out these free shopping cards because they want the information you give them. When you complete the surveys for these offers the marketing companies learn valuable information about consumers. They will in turn sell this information about your preferences to the large companies. That is how they are able to give these cards away for free, or for a small fee.

Knowing this should give you some confidence in participating in these outstanding offers. These programs are not completely free, even if you do not have to spend one penny because you are giving away your information to these marketers in exchange for the benefit of the gift card. It really is a win win situation for you and for these research companies. Just doing a few searches on Yahoo or Bing should give you some great offers to explore with values up to one thousand dollars. It is really easy tog get started, all you usually have to do is submit your email address and the offer will reply with instructions. My personal favorite is the free Walmart gift card offer with a value of 1000 dollars.

About the Author

Elijiah Rampart is an internet researcher on family and finance issues. He is particularly interested finding the best gift card programs available, including the Walmart gift card. Find out more information on what he has learned by visiting http://walmartgiftcard.

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