So, being the lawyer I am, I read the entire 41 page opinion and what jumped out at me is that, according to the contract: among other things, 99.9% of transactions have to post the following business day, 99.9% of electronic payments must post the following business day, 97% of non-electronic payments have to post the following business day and 99.9% of replacement cards must be mailed within 5 days.
These are very difficult metrics for a bank as large and complex as Capital One with a user base as large as Walmart card to achieve. It was almost certain to go in Walmart's favor and it was frankly a crap contract for Capital One.
Undoubtedly Walmart had so much power that it could dictate these terms, knowing that it was very likely to eventually be in a position where it could unilaterally cancel the contract because these metrics are almost impossible to achieve.
Reminds me of the Goldman Sachs / Apple contract where Apple completely dictated the terms. Goldman Sachs didn't default on those terms but they were so bad for Goldman Sachs that they couldn't make any money off the thing.
I've known vendors who have worked or tried to work with Walmart and they say that Walmart will lowball them every chance and will renegotiate contracts all the time and the majority of them say they will never work with Walmart again. They think, hey Walmart's going to order 100,000 widgets from me, what could go wrong, but in the end they make very little profit from the deal.
Of note perhaps only to lawyers, the decision turned on the definition of the word "a."
