Prepaid Debit Card Reviews, Complaints, Etc

Tag: Walmart

  • Where Can I Get an American Express Serve Card (You Can Apply @ WalMart)?

    Where Can I Get an American Express Serve Card (You Can Apply @ WalMart)?

    Welcome to our site! Our editors have been covering the credit and debit card space for a total of 30+ years and we are proud to have been featured by the Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc. Your input is invaluable and we’d love to have your opinion as to whether the Chime Bank debit card is a good deal (see below) – this site is powered by you!

    Related Visa Card to Compare to AmEx Serve (like Serve but with less fees):

    Chime is a new Visa card that is amazingly free (unless you use the card outside of their large ATM network). This is best alternative to a prepaid card that we’ve seen in 5+ years and offers all of the benefits of traditional bank account.

    It’s a real debit card, not a prepaid debit card which usually have a lot more fees) and people with poor credit can apply too as there is no credit check. Chime can be managed entirely from your smartphone. No overdraft fees. No minimum balance. No monthly service fees. No transfer fees. Over 38,000 fee-free ATMs, plus 30,000+ cash-back locations.

    And for a limited time, earn a Cash referral bonus of $50 when you tell your friends and family members about Chime and they sign up (and they’ll earn $50 too)- details within the app after you apply! Click for more info.- you can apply online in just 2 mins with no obligation. Start by simply entering your email address and clicking “Get Started”– over 3 million customers couldn’t be wrong. 🙂 (Ad Link)

    Please Note! This article was published in 2013 and is being keep for historical purposes. Please click here for our current review of the American Express (AmEx) Serve Card.

    In October of 2012 American Express and Walmart teamed up to launch Bluebird, a low-fee card meant to attract people unhappy with traditional checking and debit account fees. On April 21st of this year, Walmart and AmEx announced that they were joining forces again, this time to make the American Express Serve prepaid card available for sale at 4,100 of the retailer’s stores nationwide. The card will cost $1.95 and be sold at checkout lines and in Walmart MoneyCenters.

    This announcement instantly gives AmEx an attractive bragging point in the increasingly competitive prepaid debit card industry. By making Serve available at thousands of Walmart stores, AmEx has has created the largest free cash reload network in America. In addition to Walmart, it is now possible for Serve customers to add cash to their Serve accounts for no charge at 19,500 locations, including CVS pharmacies and 7-Eleven locations.

    Customers can now go to the cash register at any of those locations and add as little as $20 or as much as $500 to their Serve accounts. This ubiquity is important, says Madeline Aufseeser, a senior analyst at Aite Group. “American Express Serve is making it even more convenient for consumers to add cash to their accounts so they can use those funds to quickly and easily manage their personal finances,” she says.

    This expansion of Serve is just the latest effort by AmEx to better serve the millions of so-called “unbanked” or “underbanked” Americans, who either don’t have a traditional bank account or are unhappy with what they do have. “By offering American Express Serve alongside Bluebird at Walmart, we’re expanding our portfolio of products to meet the needs of more Walmart shoppers,” says Dan Schulman, group president of Enterprise Growth at American Express. “Bluebird is a great option for the “unhappily banked” who are looking for a true alternative to the fees and hidden charges often associated with debit and checking. With Serve, our full service reloadable prepaid account, we can now provide the nearly 70 million Americans who are unbanked or underbanked a simple and affordable way to move and manage their money.”

    To go along with its expansion of the availability of Serve cards, AmEx is also launching an advertising campaign to highlight the benefits of its signature prepaid product. The TV ads are shot in a documentary style and are meant to highlight the struggles regular Americans who are either ignored or underserved by the traditional banking system face to make simple financial transactions.

    Where Can you Apply for American Express Serve Prepaid Card?

  • Green Dot Fights Scammers

    Green Dot Fights Scammers

    It seemed like a genuine family emergency. When an 81-year-old Cincinnati resident named Roger answered his phone last December he thought he was talking to his grandson, who told the elderly man that he was in big trouble. The caller told Roger that he had been arrested for speeding and drug possession and needed $7,000 so he could post bail. Being a devoted grandfather, Roger quickly put the money on a prepaid debit card and gave the account number to someone he thought was a police officer.

    The only problem: Roger reached his real grandson on his cell phone and realized that he had been swindled. Roger’s tale (he insisted on anonymity for fear of being targeted by other criminals) was one of the stories’ victims of so-called “grandparent scams” told to members of the US Senate’s Special Committee on Aging on July 16. By no means is Roger alone. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Americans were cheated out of $73 million by imposter scams, a number the government believes is far below the actual cost of all of this type of crime.

    Although the hearing was designed to highlight the impact these crimes have on the elderly, it also resulted in some genuine action. In its own written testimony before the committee, Green Dot Corporation, one of the leading suppliers of prepaid debit cards, announced that it would eliminate the MoneyPak PIN, which allowed money to be added to an account to take place via phone. Instead, Green Dot, which issues the Walmart MoneyCard, will now only allow cardholders to reload their accounts with cash in person – a method known as “swipe reloading.”

    It’s a change Green Dot insists will make it harder for criminals to commit fraud. “Without the MoneyPak PIN, the scammer will have no method of instructing a senior to buy a product and no method of redeeming any associated PIN number,” Green Dot said in its testimony. The company says the MoneyPak PIN has already been removed from all Walmarts and it expects it will be eliminated from all retailers by early 2015.

     

     

     

     

  • Prepaid Card Use Continues To Grow

    Prepaid Card Use Continues To Grow

    This page is no longer active. Please click here for our latest prepaid debit card reviews.

  • AmEx Serve Cards Announcement Hits Green Dot

    AmEx Serve Cards Announcement Hits Green Dot

    When American Express announced earlier this week that its prepaid Serve cards can now be purchased at 4,100 Walmarts nationwide, the stock market reacted. But as a story on ABC News points out, Wall Street was mostly interested in what the partnership means for Green Dot, a major player in the prepaid card industry.

    And if the immediate aftermath of this major expansion in the availability of Serve cards to Walmart is any indication, Wall Street believes that Green Dot is in trouble. Indeed, in the two days after AmEx announced that Walmart shoppers could pick up its ultra low-fee Serve cards for $1.95 while buying groceries, Green Dot shares were down over eight percent.

    As the ABC News report makes clear, this is just the latest downturn in what has been a steep decline in Wall Street’s assessment of Green Dot. Not long after Green Dot held its initial public offering in 2010, it soared to over $60 per share. The company’s shares were trading at below $20 after the Serve announcement, which also included the news that the addition of thousands of Walmarts had helped AmEx create the largest free cash reload network in America.

    What’s behind this grim assessment of Green Dot’s prospects? According to Yahoo! Finance’s Mike Santoli, it comes down to competition. “Their whole business is being threatened because they collect prepaid fees off of these debit cards,” Santoli told ABC News. And the fee comparison doesn’t bode well for Green Dot. Consumers can pick up an AmEx Serve card and pay a $1 monthly fee compared to an average $5.95 monthly fee for Green Dot cards.

    There’s also a perception problem for Green Dot, argues Santoli. Both AmEx and Green Dot prepaid cards are available at Walmart. “The perception here is that Walmart is throwing its weight a little bit more behind AmEx than Green Dot,” he says.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • Green Dot and Walmart Expand Prepaid Partnership

    Green Dot and Walmart Expand Prepaid Partnership

    Six new Walmart MoneyCard prepaid debit cards are announced as the retailer expands its partnership with Green Dot

    by Chris Warren

    Just how well, or poorly, Green Dot Corporation, a leading supplier of prepaid debit cards, would fare in its latest quarterly earnings report was the source of considerable disagreement. In the weeks leading up to the company’s third quarter earnings announcement on Halloween, one Wall Street analyst covering the company downgraded his rating, saying that increased competition in the prepaid space from powerful entities like American Express would hurt Green Dot. Then, just days before Green Dot unveiled its earnings, another analyst pooh-poohed concerns that competition would scuttle Green Dot and elevated his rating.

    It’s unlikely that the actual earnings announcement by Green Dot will end the debate. Still, it would be hard to say that Green Dot is exactly wilting under the pressure of increased competition. Indeed, the company reported third quarter revenue of $136 million, an increase of 3 percent from the same quarter in 2012. But the picture wasn’t entirely rosy. Higher company expenses meant that Green Dot’s net income fell from $9.6 million in the third quarter of 2012 to $6.1 million this year, a drop of 36 percent.

    Green Dot CEO Steve Streit said the results bode well for the future. “We feel very good about the future prospects for our company and believe we are well-positioned to return to double digit revenue growth as we look towards 2014,” he said.

    One reason Streit is optimistic about Green Dot’s future is because on the same day as it revealed its third quarter earnings it also announced that it was expanding its partnership with Walmart. In the past Green Dot Bank issued three versions of the Walmart MoneyCard – the Basic, Plus and Preferred cards – each of which varied in the sorts of features they offered and in their costs.

    Now, thanks to its expanded collaboration with Green Dot, Walmart is offering a selection of new cards, each of which cost either $5 or $4.95 to purchase. Among the new choices are a “create your own” prepaid Visa, which allows cardholders to customize their card with a personal photograph. Other new cards are geared to NASCAR and NFL fans as well as outdoorsmen. The NASCAR prepaid Visas allow customers to choose between photos of Kasey Kahne, Danica Patrick, Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. NFL fans can have their cards emblazoned with one of 12 teams (more to come later) and the so-called Mossy Oak prepaid MasterCard gives its users special deals throughout hunting season.

  • Hackers Target Walmart MoneyCards

    Hackers Target Walmart MoneyCards

    Walmart MoneyCard holders around the U.S. report being swindled 

    by Chris Warren

    It has been a miserable month for a small number of Walmart MoneyCard customers. According to a story on the website ConsumerAffairs.com, a host of Americans who use the retailer’s general purpose reloadable prepaid debit card have had their accounts hacked recently.

    In the piece by writer Jennifer Abel, Walmart MoneyCard holders in Missouri, Ohio and California all reported very similar experiences in which a thief in New York City drains victims’ accounts by getting hold of their account information and then making purchases at a Target in Brooklyn. One of the victims, Kelly L. from Canton, Ohio, complained that she checked her account balance on Sept. 9 and discovered that it had just $1.41, thanks largely to 5 purchases made at a Target in New York City the day before. “I am waiting for [Walmart] to send me a new card so I can get the amount owed to me, then I am closing my account,” she wrote.

    In a follow-up story on Sept. 18 Abel wrote that Walmart had neither responded to her requests for comment nor resolved any of the earlier cases. Abel did, however, quote the Walmart cardholder policy, which urges anyone who believes their card or PIN has been lost or stolen to notify the company immediately. “You will not lose any part of the money on your card based on unauthorized use if you have exercised reasonable care in safeguarding your Card and PIN from risk of loss or theft,” it says. “However, if these conditions are NOT met, you could lose the lesser of $50 or the amount of unauthorized use from your Card before you notify us that your Card has been lost or stolen.”

    In other words, the terms of the cardholder policy give some assurance that those who were victimized by the New York fraudster will get most, if not all, of their money back. But as Abel notes – and as we have reported on in the past – prepaid debit cards offer far less protection than debit or credit cards in the event they are lost or stolen. That said, if you are unfortunate enough to fall victim to a criminal, the most important thing to do is to alert the card issuer right away and continuously follow-up with the company to ensure that you get as much of your money back as possible.

Prepaid Debit Card Reviews, Complaints, Etc