Green Dot Corp. continued to expand use of its prepaid cards in the second quarter, posting a 26.5% increase in its number of active cards from a year earlier.
The Monrovia, Calif.-based company, whose prepaid cards are sold by retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Walgreen Co., said active cards, or those that customers have used to make a purchase, reload funds or conduct an ATM withdrawal in the previous 90 days was 4.1 million as of June 30, up from 3.24 million.
In general, customers loaded more funds into accounts accessed with Green Dot cards, which function like a traditional debit card but lack a corresponding demand deposit account offered by mainstream banks. The gross dollar volume was $3.6 billion, up 50% from $2.4 billion. The company also activated 1.82 million new cards the quarter, up 22.9% from 1.48 million.
The higher figures helped Green Dot post a 27.8% increase in operating revenue, to $115 million from $90.3 million. Of that total, card revenues rose 27.7%, to $53.9 million from $42.2 million; funds-transfer revenue was up 32.8%, to $32.4 million from $24.4 million; and interchange revenues rose 26.3%, to $33.1 million from $26.2 million, Green Dot reported in its earnings release.
The company said net income fell 3.5%, to $12.5 million from $12.5 million, citing an unusually low tax rate and lower commissions paid to a large distributor partner that helped boost income for the year-ago period.
