Until a couple of years ago, Goldman Sachs (GS -0.03%) was almost exclusively an investment bank. However, over the past few years it has started to make a big push into the consumer banking side of the business. First, it rolled out the Marcus brand, which offers personal loans and high-yield savings accounts. Then, Goldman jumped head-first into the credit card business by partnering with Apple (AAPL -0.40%) to launch the Apple credit card product.
More recently, Goldman introduced an investment platform for everyday Americans, and partnered with Amazon (AMZN -0.82%) to provide small business credit lines to merchants. And as if pairing up with Amazon didn't give Goldman enough reach into the e-commerce world, another major partnership was just announced.
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Goldman and Walmart are teaming up
The latest expansion of the Marcus brand's reach comes in the form of a small business lending partnership with Walmart (WMT -0.39%).
Goldman's consumer banking unit is launching small business credit lines to merchants who sell on Walmart's Marketplace. Initial credit lines will range from $10,000 to $75,000, but the bank eventually wants to offer lines of as much as $1 million to qualifying merchants. And these could be highly profitable for Goldman, as the credit lines will come with fixed interest rates between 6.99% and 20.99%.
This could end up being a big boost to Goldman's consumer lending business. Walmart's online sales volume nearly doubled year over year in the second quarter, and through a new partnership with Shopify (SHOP -1.69%) to help sellers list items on its platform, this could be just the beginning of the retail giant's push into e-commerce.
