Photo of Chris Jameson, Bank of America Merrill Lynch collects the award on behalf of Walmart.
Walmart has installed cash recycler machines across all of its 4,700 US stores, including obtaining provisional credit from all banks for the cash that is in the machines.
Matt Allen
Assistant Treasurer
What started small, with a single discount store and the simple idea of selling more for less, has grown over the last 50 years into the largest retailer in the world. Each week, over 260m customers and members visit their 11,695 stores under 59 banners in 28 countries and e-commerce websites in 11 countries. With fiscal year 2017 revenue of US$485.9bn, Walmart employs approximately 2.3m associates worldwide.
in partnership with
Number one ranked Fortune 500 company frees ‘trapped cash’ with recycling solution
The challenge
Historically, every coin and note that came in and out of the stores was manually counted multiple times. Matt Allen, Assistant Treasurer explains, “Our objectives were quite simple really, we wanted to move the company from a traditional model with physical money being delivered and collected, to a more automated relationship where funds clear as they enter the machine in the store.”
The solution
Walmart has installed cash recycler machines across all of its 4,700 US stores, including obtaining provisional credit from all banks for the cash that is in the machines. This innovative approach allows Walmart to significantly streamline its cash management process while also reducing its working capital by many hundreds of millions of dollars. Allen comments, “Walmart is now the largest user of cash recyclers worldwide.”
The recycler technology can count 3,300 coins per minute and seven to 14 notes per second. Thanks to cash recyclers all manual counting has been removed from stores. This generated significant time savings and enhanced accuracy and now allows Walmart employees to spend more time in customer-facing roles rather than counting money in the back office. Recycled cash can be utilised in the store, as required, with all transactions tracked by register and denomination. Additionally, the enhanced control environment has allowed Walmart to reduce fraud risk.
Best practice and innovation
Walmart worked closely with Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML), who has a strategic relationship with G4S Retail Cash Solutions, to introduce the Bank’s CASH3601 service. They designed this solution to maximise working capital efficiency and implemented the bank-owned cash model, which has never been adopted before in the industry. This innovative approach completely revolutionised Walmart’s interaction with banks.
Additionally, this has changed Walmart’s relationship with its armoured carrier partners in support of this product and their engagement with the device.
