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FirstView LLC is pitching a checking product designed to make its prepaid payroll cards a competitive alternative to bank accounts, according to American Banker, a CardLine sister publication. The Atlanta-based card marketer expects to begin offering the checks to its customers this year and will target consumers turned off by the overdraft fees banks charge. "The reason so many of our customers have been excluded from the mainstream banking system is because they bounced too many checks in the past," says Cherie M. Fuzzell, FirstView president and CEO. Customers essentially will "pre-fund" the checks with a prepaid account, so they will not be able to bounce, Fuzzell says. "We call it responsible banking." The checks will bear the customer's name and address and will clear through a trust account at an undisclosed bank, whose name also will appear on the checks. Meta Financial Group Inc. will issue the Espree cards, though Meta will not clear the checks. FirstView expects to have 400,000 cardholders by the end of the year. It will offer the checks only to consumers whose accounts are funded by direct deposit of a paycheck. Fuzzell expects the checks to generate about two or three additional transactions per customer every month; doing so would increase its annual transaction volume by about 150,000. FirstView cardholders will be able to write one check per month for free; they will pay $1.50 for each additional check. To write a check, cardholders would call a number to request that the funds be set aside. They then would receive an authorization code they must write on the check. The code is meant to reassure recipients that the check is good.
