Kaiku Finance LLC has begun offering the Kaiku card, which carries a $1.95 monthly fee and describes itself primarily as a budgeting tool rather than an account substitute. Jon Round, the company’s CEO, says that it is interest in “all types of customers.”
From a Marketplace article:
And in July, Kaiku Finance, a California-based card issuer, unveiled its debut offering a product simply known as the Kaiku Card that it is pitching not as a poor man’s alternative to a credit or traditional debit card, but as a legitimate way to manage money.
As the article notes, Kaiku is one of several companies taking advantage of the consumer trend towards using prepaid as a budgeting tool. American Express, JPMorgan Chase, and others have also launched cards that aim at the budgeting demographic. Mercator Advisory Group’s CustomerMonitor Survey Series has documented this trend over the past few years.
