Walmart's (WMT) big new free agent signing for its C-suite could mean only one thing.
A major push into financial services over the next decade.
The world's largest retailer said late Tuesday it has hired PayPal CFO John Rainey as its next CFO, replacing long-time CFO Brett Biggs. Rainey is a highly regarded CFO who loves hitting the free weights and has helped build the modern day PayPal with CEO Dan Schulman over the past seven years.
Rainey will assume his new role at Walmart on June 6.
While Rainey's departure is a big loss for PayPal (PYPL), it's equally a very big win for Walmart given Rainey's expertise in taking PayPal from just a button on the eBay site to one that transacts crypto and has the beast that is Venmo.
"Walmart ventured externally for its new CFO, a departure from prior patterns, and locked in a seasoned public-facing hire with a nod to the company's future as a provider of financial services for its customers. We also see the appointment as a progressive choice as Walmart evolves its ecosystem and thinking re: its customer as user, offering a broader suite of high-value services through Walmart+ and leveraging data to level up the enterprise margin profile," said Jefferies analyst Stephanie Wissink.
To that end, Walmart has already been sending signals it's quite bullish on the fintech space — notably as it pertains to financial services.
In 2021, Walmart joined forces to launch an independent fintech startup with Ribbit Capital. Ribbit invested in Robinhood early on in 2021.
Then in February of this year, Walmart's fintech operation — now dubbed Hazel - acquired fintechs Even and One. Walmart said the purchases will help the company "deliver a single financial services app that empowers consumers to get paid, spend, save, borrow and grow their money."
Rainey's PayPal experience should help Walmart scale up operations such as this, and find new opportunities in the fintech space.
As an added bonus for Walmart: Rainey has deep deals experience, having signed off on billion dollar-plus deals at PayPal that include Honey and Paidy. That will likely come in handy as Walmart likely looks to explore options for its lucrative stake in India's Flipkart should it IPO this year, as speculated.
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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