Interesting facts from the first day of The Power of Prepaid at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center at National Harbor, Maryland:
a) Buried deep in Dodd-Frank, in the section entitled "miscellaneous," is a portion that addresses the issue of "blood phones."
University of Phoenix's corporate parent reports large drop in enrollments: Apollo Group, the parent of the U of Phoenix and several other for-profit schools, says that
As a fairly unitary tool for payments, a prepaid card functions more like a utility than a transformative product. It it a tool that lacks any connection to a mission, even if it does elevate a formerly-cashed person's status in the financial world.
For better or worse, a prepaid card is decidedly not engaging. In pop philosopher Marshall
Transformational products do more than make a profit; they inspire loyalty among their consumers which can become the basis for a deep long-term moat.
There are three elements to a transformational product. First and most fundamentally, it confers the opportunity upon its user to realize a mission. A transformational product is
SpendSmart, the prepaid company that dropped millions of dollars on Justin Bieber to serve as a pitch man, may not be around much longer.
Accountants tend to be about as rash as oak trees, but in looking over
Late last night, Green Dot announced that it will acquire the Wal-Mart reloadable prepaid card program (Wal-Mart MoneyCard) currently issued by GE Capital Retail Bank.
The MoneyCard is one of the largest prepaid cards in the country. When combined with Green Dot,
When a comment by Justin Bieber veered beyond the comfort of mainstream taste last week, it demonstrated the risks that any company takes when its aligns its brand with a celebrity. In hiring Justin Bieber, SpendSmart is leading with the sizzle but hiding the steak.
Over the weekend, Bieber made a joke about Anne Frank. While the
I was one of the 25 lucky folks that got a chance to meet Magic Johnson at last month's Prepaid Expo in Orlando.
Magic is very tall.
When CEOs or prepaid card companies act to counter the voices of critics that call their products "second-tier bank accounts," one oft-cited defense has been that these cards have FDIC insurance. American Express' BlueBird card - otherwise a functional and affordable product - remains the lone holdout among major prepaid cards.
Any prepaid debit card can come with FDIC insurance as long as funds are placed into a bank account held in the name of the depositor. There is a cost, which the FDIC assesses based on the sum of deposits as well as the
At several points in the recent past, I have questioned the efficacy of the savings sub-accounts that are typically on offer with most prepaid cards.
The most common iteration in prepaid savings is the high-yield account with a