FiCentive, a subsidiary of Payment Data Systems, announced that it has launched a reloadable prepaid card for businesses designed to help them disburse commissions, rewards, and other payments.
The full-featured, consumer prepaid card offers the acceptance of a major payment network and a novel value proposition – it provides businesses a platform to instantly disburse cash, whether it is commissions, rewards or other payments. This means that funds can be made available to the recipient at least a day earlier when compared to traditional ACH transfers. The Stream Card can also be co-branded or white-labeled, depending on the application and needs of the business partner.
According to the company’s release, cardholders also can load funds onto the card through direct deposit, bank transfer, remote deposit capture of checks, and cash at retail locations. The card is in essence a general purpose reloadable card that is being marketed to businesses as payments tool. While the card itself is not extremely novel, its positioning shows how prepaid cards can be adapted to a variety of purposes and continue to break out of the narrow mode of checking account replacements for the poor, which has been its driving narrative for so long.
Overview by Ben Jackson, Director, Prepaid Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group