Prepaid card giant Green Dot, who recently announced that they would cease selling MoneyPak (read here), now plans to begin offering credit lines to its customers. It’s a move the company has tried before, in 2006, but those cards came with a very low limit and heavy fees. The new version will hopefully make more sense.
Green Dot CEO Steve Streit said in an earnings call with analysts last Thursday that he envisions Green Dot offering a secured credit card and an unsecured line of credit. These products, a type of subprime credit card, will be marketed to Green Dot’s base of low- and moderate-income customers.
“FICO scores are not what they used to be. In our demographic, they were never good to begin with,” Streit said during the earnings call. “So if you’re a single mom with two kids, and you’re making $50,000 or $60,000 a year in household income, you’re not going to get a loan from any bank. We want to change that with a highly pro-consumer, well-priced product.”
Most likely these cards won’t be a game changer. There’s so many credit cards offers out there nowadays, and probably anyone will find a better deal that a Green Dot card. But let’s wait and see, maybe we’ll be surprised.
