Bancorp Bank Issuing PayPal Debit MasterCard

The Bancorp Inc. has begun issuing a cobranded PayPal debit MasterCard, the financial institution announced March 12.

The Wilmington, Del.-based retail bank has been issuing the card since December through its payment solutions group, according to a PayPal spokesperson.

"Consumers want to be able to feel secure when shopping online with a debit card, and with PayPal's dedication to security," Jeremy Kuiper, The Bancorp Payment Solutions Group's managing director, said in a press release.

In the past several months, PayPal, a unit of eBay Inc. of San Jose, Calif., has increased its efforts to speak to U.S. retail banks about potential partnerships (see story).

PayPal also has been active recently with prepaid cards, announcing a deal last month with NetSpend Holdings Inc. (see story).  PayPal and MasterCard launched another prepaid a week earlier in the United Kingdom, offering a PayPal Access Prepaid MasterCard that provides merchants access to funds in their PayPal accounts without going through a bank to make a funds transfer (see story).