At the hearing's opening, Wal-Mart Financial Services' Jane Thompson emphasized that the company has no plans to put its own bank branches in its stores and that it only wants the charter to process credit card and debit card transactions.

"You will not see a Wal-Mart branch in a Wal-Mart store," Thompson said. She said the company is "absolutely committed not to participate in branch banking."

But panel and after panel of banking organizations, community groups, labor unions and other organizations listed their reasons for opposing the application and urged the FDIC to reject it.

Most witnesses believed that if Utah and the FDIC approved the application, Wal-Mart would eventually move into other types of banking, regardless of what it says now. They point to the fact the company tried — and failed — retail banking in other states and top company officials have been quoted in the news media saying that mortgages or other financial services could be in the company's future.

Wal-Mart seeks to use a regulatory loophole that allows any type of company to own a certain sort of bank, known as an industrial loan corporation, or ILC, which would let it avoid the regulatory requirements that apply to corporate owners of other types of insured banks overseen by the Federal Reserve, regulators say.

General Motors, General Electric, Pitney Bowes, BMW and Harley-Davidson are among companies that now own ILCs under the exemption. Wal-Mart rival Target Corp. has one in Utah that it uses to issue credit cards for corporate customers.

"It appears to me that Wal-Mart is simply using the limited scope ILC application as an avenue to enter into the full fledged banking business," said Larry D. Maschhoff, president of Bank of Illinois.

He noted that the company's application includes offering short-term certificates of deposit to nonprofit, charitable and educational organizations, and to individual investors.

"This is much different than their press releases indicating they are only interested in performing payment processing for their own stores and subsidiaries," Maschhoff said. "The deposit gathering function will be detrimental to all financial institutions and to all of their competitors."

Other opponents told the FDIC, which insures bank deposits against a bank's failure, said Wal-Mart's size could put the nation's financial system at risk.

"Given Wal-Mart's massive scope and international dealings, it is not possible to rule out a financial crisis within the company that could damage the bank and severely disrupt the flow of payments throughout the financial system," said Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, who heads a group of lawmakers opposed to the company's application. "The potential losses to the FDIC are staggering. Our country is extremely fortunate that Enron and WorldCom did not own banks."