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Prepaid card provider nFinanSe Inc. Tuesday announced it has raised $12.2 million in shareholders' equity through the sale of preferred stock and warrants convertible to common stock. New and existing shareholders bought the shares, according to Jerry Welch, nFinanSe CEO. NFinanSe believes the equity helps the company maintain a "good balance sheet" as it attempts to grow along with the prepaid card industry. "It's a significant event for us to be putting this kind of equity in the company," Welch tells CardLine sister publication ATM&Debit News. The Tampa, Fla.-based company, which has struggled financially for nearly a decade, made two other announcements during the past two weeks that could help grow its share of the prepaid card market. Within three months, nFinanSe plans to begin offering Visa-branded, reloadable prepaid cards issued by Palm Desert National Bank. NFinanSe previously offered only Discover-branded reloadable prepaid cards, also issued by Palm Desert. That announcement came a week after nFinanSe announced a distribution deal with Coinstar Inc. Under the deal, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company, known for its coin-counting kiosks, is to make nFinanSe's products available through its network of 30,000 retail sites starting in the fourth quarter. Coinstar also is a prepaid card distributor. NFinanSe has a similar deal with InComm Inc., an Atlanta-based marketer and distributor of reloadable prepaid debit cards. NFinanSe's strategy is to get as much distribution through retail stores as possible, Welch says. "We want to get our cards, which have differentiating offerings, at any and all retailers," he says.
