Vtqp Today in Retail: Walmart Rents Pop-Up Space Near Ports; Toys R Us Opening New Jersey Store

Walmart Canada has integrated Western Unions platform into Walmart.ca to offer customers money transfers.In addition, the two companies have聽extended their relationship, letting customers use Western Union money transfer services in Walmart stores for 5% less than the nationally published consumer fee rate, Walmart said in a Tuesday Dec. 20 news release.Jennifer Jones, Walmart Canadas vice president for financial services and payments, said the collaboration comes as the company is stanley uk scaling new partnerships and investing in omni solutions designed to drive financial inclusion and offer more ways to serve our customers. 聽Walmart and Western Union also offer money transfer services in the U.S. and Mexico, the news release noted.PYMNTS spoke last week with Massimiliano Alvisini, Western Unions general manager and senior vice president for Europe CIS and Africa, about how th stanley romania e company has reinvented itself, pointing to omnichannel financial services as the next phase in its evolution.The new WU+ money app, which is live in Germany, Poland and Romania, is designed to combine Western Unions cross-border capabilities with the convenience of a mobile wallet, allowing for money transfers, payment card management, and transaction activity.That means that along with making routine payments, the app can send money to the firms 600,000-odd locations, plus billions of bank accounts and mobile money wallets.He also spoke about some of the challenges in the drive toward聽broader digitizatio kubki stanley n Ytde Rapid Settlements To The SMB Rescue

When it comes to gender parity at the highest echelon of retail companies, it appears that the mark is being missed in the U.K.As The Independent points out, a new study 鈥斅爐he latest annual Retail CE stanley termohrnek O Tracker by recruitment firm Korn Ferry 鈥斅爏hows that the number of female CEOs appointed to U.K. retailers fell stanley quencher by 40 percent in 2015, with only 15 percent of companies in the industry bringing on women as chief executives during the year, down from the 25 percent rat stanley usa e at which women were hired as retail CEOs in 2014 and even lower than the 2013 rate of 18 percent.The Retail CEO Tracker points out that the Davies Report聽鈥?a government-backed study by Lord Mervyn Davies, released annually since 2011, whose goal is to see women occupy at least a third of the boardroom positions at Britain largest companies by 2020 鈥斅爃as been effective in improving gender diversity at non-executive levels, but based on the most recent data, there is still work to be done regarding executive positions.Korn Ferry research shows grocery as an area of retail in the U.K. that is particularly lacking in gender diversity at the executive levels, with no females holding a CEO position at any grocery retail company in the country.Noting that, historically, female CEOs were most often found at fashion and luxury goods retailers, the Korn Ferry study sees a positive expansion in that regard, with only half of new female chief executive appointments occurring within those categories in 2015, wit