G4S has signed a $210m (£148.8m) five-year deal with Walmart to provide the US grocery behemoth’s cash services across a huge swathe of its American stores. Reports say that G4S has quietly begun the installation of its Cash 360 system, which reduces the need to handle cash and limits opportunities for theft through collection points at tills, in 900 Walmart stores, and has confirmed orders for 1,360 stores in total. In the future, the company could roll out the system to a further 2,750 stores, it has estimated. Cash360 works by requiring the cashier to deposit cash into an intelligent safe which detects and removes counterfeit notes, then counts and deposits banknotes into a cash bag.
This cash bag is located inside a safe that is not accessible by the cashier, before later being picked up by G4S and transported in a secure vehicle. It is also possible to link the safe via an online connection to the retailer’s bank so that cash can be credited to the business’s account on a daily basis, improving a business’s cash flow.
Walmart is the US’s biggest private employer and the largest retailer in the world, employing around 2.2 million people to serve more than 260 million customers. It has more than 4,500 stores in the US alone, and reported net income of $4.57bn for the three month period to January 31.
