Prepaid cards

More companies are adding financial health programs to their benefits, creating a market that fits with one of the common uses consumers have found for prepaid cards.

London-based Vegannection has launched a prepaid card for vegans that’s accepted only at merchants that pass its standards test.

The boom in e-commerce—boosted by mobile devices—is spawning a record number of returns and associated shipping and payment hassles.

Established as a transit-fare and small-value payment card in Hong Kong nearly 20 years ago, the Octopus Card is making a transition to a virtual prepaid card for online shopping.

Gifting is becoming more international and diverse, leading to a role for a a distributed ledger to streamline the user experience and bolster incentive marketing.

Credit and debit cards often overshadow prepaid gift cards, but the tables get turned during holidays, particularly as people get gift cards for themselves.

Two German companies, Wirecard and the startup givve, are expanding their partnership to develop more programs for companies to deliver employee benefits via prepaid cards.

Taking a cue from his previous success in commercial cash checking services, Conext CEO Michael Casalini hopes a Venmo-style mobile app that supports a quick conversion of checks to digital money can attract small businesses.

As the gift card market grows and becomes increasingly digital, so has the product's utility. Thus, many consumers are shifting their habits and buying gift cards for themselves either due to an incentive program or to help with budgeting.

Petrol, Slovenia’s leading gas station operator, has partnered with Wirecard and Mastercard, enabling users of Petrol’s MBills mobile wallet to add a prepaid Mastercard to their accounts.

One U.K. fintech hopes its cryptocurrency-based prepaid debit card will gain traction with bitcoin and ether enthusiasts here.

Grab and Mastercard have formed a partnership extending the reach of the ride-hailing app by making a prepaid card available to Grab’s 110 million users across Southeast Asia.

Netspend customers kept from accessing paychecks; Sen. Elizabeth Warren rebukes Comerica over fraud in benefits program; FDIC poised to revamp deposit rules (about time, say banks); and more from this week's most-read stories.

Customer furor stemmed from troubles FIS had processing payments for MetaBank, the issuer of Netspend and other prepaid debit cards.

Neither the prepaid issuer nor its bank partner can say when cardholders — many living paycheck to paycheck — will receive their funds.

In hundreds of cases, the prepaid card program run by the bank allegedly sent users’ funds to fraudsters who had stolen their data. The security lapse has now caught the attention of the Democratic senator.

Banks and credit unions will have to re-engineer a number of systems to meet the eclectic demands of the generation born roughly in the last 10 to 20 years.

Banks will have to re-engineer a number of systems to meet the eclectic demands of the generation born roughly in the last 10 to 20 years.

Just as Green Dot leveraged partnerships with the likes of Uber and Apple to expand its reach, Netspend also is looking to its retail partners including Kroger, CVS and Kohl’s for new digital payment use cases.

The payments, which total more than $10 million, stem from a 2017 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The agency charged that NetSpend deceived consumers by advertising that they could get immediate access to their funds.