Plastyc Inc. now does business as Banking Up, a name that signifies the direction in which it is taking its prepaid offerings, iBankUP and the UPside Visa card.
"Plastyc was a name we chose in the beginning, spelling it with a Y because when we started we focused on youth products, products for Generation Y," says Patrice Peyret, the company's CEO. "The name Plastyc, which we did not use for our consumer-facing product, was not suitable for our platform/white-label business."
The company, which is still legally named Plastyc Inc., is placing a greater emphasis on its business-to-business products, offering the Banking Upformerly Powered by Plastycplatform as a service, Peyret says. It provides this technology
"Banking Up is reflecting our mission and goals better our mission is to help people bank up, to get back into the banking system with prepaid cards" says Peyret. "We like our prepaid cards to be as close as possible to a checking account."
Banking Up's retail products include the UPside Visa prepaid card and the iBankUP online financial portal. IBankUP includes a virtual checkbook, a Facebook balance-checking widget and other features.
The company announced the name change at the FinovateSpring conference last month. The decision follows a bigger trend of companies tweaking their original business models to expand their audience.
About a week after Banking Up announced the rebrand, one of its partners did the same. Chexar Networks is now Ingo Money, as it underscores its business of injecting money into financial instruments such as prepaid cards.
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