American Express and Wal-Mart Team-up To Offer Reloadable Prepaid Card

American Express and Wal-Mart Team-up To Offer Reloadable Prepaid Card

American Express and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are rolling out a prepaid card that offers exceptional services devised to help customer manages and control their daily finances.

The reloadable prepaid card named Bluebird will have no minimum balance and no monthly, annual or overdraft fees. Only fees that will be linked with the card will be translucent and within the user’s control, such as out of network ATM withdrawals by consumers who don’t use direct deposit. The two companies stated.

American Express Co. and Wal-Mart Inc., declare that the card is a substitute to checking and debit accounts and will contain such features as the capability to deposit a check into one’s Bluebird account by just taking a photo with a smart phone. In the event the card is stolen or lost like other standard cards, it also offers the same fraud security.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Dan Schulman, group president, Enterprise Growth at American Express, said “We are recreating and reimagining what checking and banking services might look like in the 21^st century”, he also added that the partnership with Wal-Mart aims to set up a “moral equivalent of a bank branch at retail.”

Prepaid cards are a fast-growing part of the payments industry. They are becoming popular with consumers seeking to avoid surprise bank fees and keep from collecting credit card balances, also the cards are aimed at people who don’t have bank accounts or whose credit ratings are damaged.

However prepaid cards are normally not linked to a checking account. Monday’s announcement shows how the financial service landscape is evolving in light of the increasing popularity of smart phones and other technological advances, and growing needs of consumers, who want  ”on-the go” financial services.

Posted by James Fried on Tuesday October 09 2012, 3:52 PM EST. Ref: Reuters. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Finance. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0