Prepaid cards

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has its sights set on prepaid and debit cards offered to college students as such products are filling the gaps left by credit card issuers which have largely left the space, according to a study released by the agency Dec. 15.

Stockpile, a company that provides digital gift cards for buying stock, has partnered with the financial technology vendor Yodlee to offer banks products aimed at encouraging consumers to save and invest.

Many disruptive technologies come from startups, but just as many seem to come from companies that have been around for decades. Whether developing a new system in-house or providing a necessary proving ground for a partner, these older companies are bringing fresh innovations to the payments industry.

Blackhawk Network has reached an agreement with the U.S. Postal Service to distribute its closed-loop gift cards through post offices.

Sprint's Boost Mobile Wallet and Sprint Money Express have added features that allow users to buy and send electronic gift cards.

Bitcoin wallet providers have had a touchy relationship with prepaid cards. But whether or not these companies care about plastic, they should care about how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's prepaid proposal affects them.

Cardpool is partnering with SCVNGR's LevelUp to give consumers an alternative way to spend unwanted gift cards.

Virtual Piggy, which provides the Oink online wallet service for their youths, will release a prepaid Discover card to extend its offering to retail stores.

I would encourage the CFPB to focus their energies on advancing the road to credit concept instead of focusing on how to restrict credit.

Square, which made a short-lived attempt at digital gift cards in late 2012, is debuting a new gift card service today with a heavy emphasis on an older payment instrument: plastic.

A week after making Discover the first credit card offered in its mobile bill-pay service, PreCash Inc. has already seen a spike in the use of Evolve Money, which previously accepted only debit cards.

Consumer groups said that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was too soft in its prepaid card plan, arguing that it should have required more on upfront disclosures, banned overdraft charges, and completely severed prepaid cards from being tied to other types of credit.

Kim Kardashian may be an overexposed reality star, but she's also a tech entrepreneur with a short-lived past in the payments industry. And several companies in the Bitcoin space are repeating her biggest mistake by offering a plastic payment card.

Xapo, a bitcoin startup headed by financial services entrepreneur Wences Casares, is launching its wallet app on iOS, a move that shows the company has turned some attention to ease of use.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to go beyond industry expectations when it unveils a long-awaited proposal Thursday that would establish new requirements for prepaid cards.

InteliSpend in Fenton, Mo., has expanded its cash-back incentives after adding Discover and MasterCard to its prepaid network.

Ingo Money, which specializes in digitizing check payments, has entered an agreement to buy Salt Lake City-based Fuze Network, which handles cash loads for credit, debit and prepaid accounts.

Starbucks Corp., which now handles 16% of its U.S. sales through its mobile app, revealed today just how dominant its position has become even as it plots new features such as preordering.

InComm is adding add over 15,000 locations to its Vanilla Reload network, which allows prepaid card users to reload their general-purpose reloadable card accounts by swiping the card at the point of sale.

The customer engagement firm Parago has officially become a subsidiary of Blackhawk Network.