Increasingly, when I talk about prepaid cards with consumer advocates, they ask a similar question: “What is a good prepaid card?”

The consumer advocates are right to ask this question. I think it is the same question that most folks ask themselves when they go shopping for their own prepaid card. But it is easier asked (more…)

Post-Durbin, many issuers of prepaid debit cards have introduced higher fees upon their cardholders when they make a purchase with their PIN, but new data from the Federal Reserve shows that two-tiered pricing schedules are out-of-synch with the empirical results.

On May 1st, the Fed published a report on its examination of actual interchange prices on a per-transaction basis. The data compared signature transactions with PIN transactions. Networks (more…)

JP Morgan Chase says that it will offer a new prepaid debit card. Chase says that the Liquid card will be piloted in 200 branches.

I will be waiting and watching to see how much business this card will take from the entrenched national players like NetSpend and Green Dot. Certainly, it is an attractive card. It is very likely (more…)

First question: How does the ICE Card stack up against the competition for other prepaid cards?

Better question: How does the ICE Card inform how we ought to think about prepaid card disclosures?

The ICE Card (“so cool it’s hot”) is issued by MB Financial Bank (ticker:MBTI) and licensed as a money transmitting agency (more…)