U.S. Bancorp is offering a mobile phone application for its Visa Inc.-branded prepaid payroll card that lets users check balances and pay bills.
The Minneapolis banking company made a version of the app, which initially is for users of its AccelaPay reloadable card, available on Apple Inc.'s iPhone last week. It released a version for BlackBerry on Wednesday and plans to make one for Android devices soon, said Dominic Venturo, the chief innovation officer for retail payments solutions at U.S. Bancorp. It has also has a version for mobile web browsers.
AccelaPay is a prepaid product that employers distribute to workers without bank accounts.
"In the prepaid space, mobile access has been further behind" than in other banking product categories, Venturo said, which was a motivation for offering the app.
The app, which Monitise PLC developed, is free to use but U.S. Bancorp will charge a fee for bill payments; Venturo said the fee averages 50 cents per transaction. The bank also plans to make versions of the app available for some of its other prepaid cards.
