According to a report published yesterday, Rush Card owner Russell Simmons says his prepaid debit card will soon have a cash advance feature.

The advance will give customers who have enrolled their card in direct deposit with the ability to draw cash two days ahead of their next scheduled paycheck or payment.

The Rush Card is issued by Bancorp Bank. Since customer service at Rush only answers questions if you have an existing card, it is not possible to know the origin of this advance. It may be Bancorp, a different bank, or a non-bank financial institution.

Suze Orman will offer a low-cost prepaid debit card with free credit bureau reports.

The Approved Card has two important functions. First, the card only costs three dollars a month. The only card with a similar monthly fee is the Wal-Mart prepaid card.

Second, the card will offer free credit bureau reports from TransUnion. A credit bureau report is not a FICO score. The Suze Orman Approved Card will not reveal credit scores to its card holders, either. It will give users a good sense of how well they are doing to improve their credit.

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Even if people are ready to abandon the idea of using the prepaid card platform as a way to rebuild the credit of unbanked consumers, it is worth giving the idea another try.

Pay Rent Build Credit (“PRBC”) established a new model for helping people to build credit when it appended a non-traditional credit reporting service onto prepaid debit cards. The idea was to (more…)

Bank Freedom will no longer use MetaBank as the issuer for its prepaid debit cards. Bank Freedom follows a similar move by NetSpend to move business away from MetaBank in the wake of the regulatory interventions made against the Storm Lake, Iowa savings bank by the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Bank Freedom isn’t the first to distance itself from MetaBank. NetSpend has already begun to seek new relationships. Moreover, they have been fairly open about their motives. NetSpend (more…)

The prepaid card is about to tackle one of the more challenging issues for prison re-entry. Continental Prison Systems (CPSZ:PK) , a $4.6 million start up in California, offers a banking system for inmates. They call it the E-Z Card & Kiosk. The company installs kiosks inside state prisons and then issue debit cards to inmates. They refer to the system as the “cashless jail.”

Prisons and their prisoners face some unique challenges. It costs a lot of money for prisons to write checks. According to CPSZ, it can cost as much as $17 per check. Hard to believe, but then again, who’s counting? It is easier to see why a debit card would help prisoners. Even though prisoners can live (more…)