Financial/Banking

A massive share repurchase program at Bed Bath & Beyond enabled the company to overcome increased expenses and a decline in gross margins to produce earning per share growth that exceeded analysts’ estimates.

Walmart already offers a prepaid debit card, credit card, check cashing and money transfers, but it’s expanding its financial services to include an exclusive checking account called GoBank, with Green Dot Corp., a prepaid-cards specialist.

The checking account is linked to MasterCard debit cards. GoBank, which will be available nationwide by the end of October, doesn’t charge overdraft fees or minimum balance fees and waives the monthly membership cost of $8.95 with qualifying direct deposits of $500 a month.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores is moving deeper into financial services. The retailer is launching an exclusive checking account product, called GoBank, with Green Dot Corp., a prepaid-cards specialist that has a subsidiary bank. Wal-Mart already offers a prepaid debit card, credit card, check cashing and money transfers.

New York – Cache Inc. has entered into a new, three year, $30 million revolving credit facility with Salus Capital Partners LLC. The new facility replaces the company’s existing $25 million revolving credit facility with Wells Fargo Bank, National Association.

“We are pleased to have secured this new credit facility with Salus Capital, which improves our financial flexibility as we continue to implement our turnaround plan to position Cache for profitable growth,” said Jay Margolis, chairman and CEO Cache.

By Dov Cohn, Bronto Software

Just three weeks after Alco appointed a brand new board of directors, the company reported a net loss of $7 million in the second quarter, compared to net earnings of $800,000 a year earlier, thanks in part to growing costs of advertising, new stores and store support.

Fort Worth, Texas – RadioShack Corp. has reportedly so far been unsuccessful in its efforts to convince an unidentified ‘major vendor’ to modify a commercial agreement in a way that could benefit a financial restructuring. According to the Wall Street Journal, RadioShack still has not identified the vendor or exactly what terms it wants to restructure, but has been negotiating with wireless carriers including AT&T and Sprint to ease the terms under which the retailer is allowed to resell equipment.

New York -- PayPal has made its first direct entry into the virtual currency space. The company announced via a blog post that it has entered into agreements with leading Bitcoin payment processors BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin. The agreements let PayPal’s digital goods merchants in North America accept Bitcoin, with a simple integration through the PayPal Payments Hub.