Prepaid Is the New Checking (With Help From Your Cellphone)
Article from Huffington Post:
Did you notice? After years of being two separate product lines, prepaid card accounts and checking accounts are merging into a single new offering:
- American Express calls Bluebird ”The Checking & Debit Alternative by American Express“
- Simple’s tag line is “Worry-Free Alternative to Traditional Banking“
- GoBank’s pitches itself as “A New Kind of Checking Account“
- … and of course, at Plastyc, we have had UPside and iBankUP providing “The Power of a Bank Account in a Phone” for a few years now
All the above products are bui…………………continues on Huffington Post
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Related News:
Urban Trust Stops Charging Overdraft Fees on Prepaid Cards
Article from American Banker (subscription):
Urban Trust’s prepaid cards, sold at the outlets of payday lender CheckSmart, offered overdraft protection for a fee of 15 cents for every $ 1 in negative balance, a rate that exceeded the interest-rate caps in several states, including Arizona and Ohio.
The $ 566 million-asset bank stopped charging the fees on Friday. It said that it would continue to offer the cards, but without overdraft protection.
As part of an agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the bank had agreed in September to analyze the fees on its prepaid cards and monitor its vendors more closely. The OCC had accused the bank of “unsafe and uns…………………continues on American Banker (subscription)
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