Prepaid Cards

A Conshohocken, Pa.-based processor has begun marketing a service that allows employees covered by flexible-spending health-care plans to use any payment or loyalty card they have to access benefits. Finpago Inc. announced this week an agreement with health-benefits administrator WageWorks Inc., San Mateo, Calif., to launch its FSAok AnyCard program …

In the Federal Reserve Board's final rule that extends Regulation E provisions to the fast-growing payroll card sector, electronic transaction reporting won out over paper statements, but issuers may take on added risk with a longer time period for dispute resolution, experts say. After a two-year process that involved taking …

Responding to the rapid build-up in popularity of gift cards, a federal banking regulator has issued guidelines telling banks what information they should disclose?and how they should disclose it?to both the buyers and ultimate users of the prepaid plastic. The new rules, which bear on matters such as expiration dates, …

Looking to increase the number of debit cards tied to flexible-spending accounts and other tax-advantaged health-care plans, MasterCard Worldwide has introduced a system that the Purchase, N.Y.-based bank card network says collects item-level detail and provides real-time substantiation at the point of sale. Substantiation, required by Internal Revenue Service rules …

Wireless provider Virgin Mobile USA LLC on Monday introduced a reloadable prepaid card that will allow its 4 million mostly young subscribers to pay for goods and services at stores and on the Web, pay bills, and send cash to one another. The card, a Visa-branded product Virgin calls the …

National City Corp., Cleveland, has begun selling a so-called non-personalized version of Visa USA's TravelMoney prepaid card, which replaces traveler's checks. National City, which is the sole major bank issuing either personalized or non-personalized versions of Visa's plastic for travelers, is offering instant issue of the new card, embossed with …

ECOM Financial Corp., which has developed a disposable, anonymous prepaid card that works on the MasterCard network, has taken a step toward commercialization by reaching an issuing agreement with First Bank of Delaware, Wilmington, Del. In an announcement released Monday, the Stuart, Fla.-based company, which has had the card in …

Processors of stored-value transactions are noting a new development that's driving growth in payroll cards, perhaps the hottest prepaid card market: Increasingly, employers are issuing them to workers with checking accounts and other established banking relationships, according to an article set to appear in the May issue of Digital Transactions …

In a new twist on stored-value plastic, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is issuing Visa-branded debit cards to low-income recipients of tax refunds. Working with Volunteer Income Tax Assistance offices in 16 cities, Chase expects the cards to help recipients who qualify for refunds under the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) …

Eyeing an expanding opportunity in debit card processing for health-related accounts, Metavante Corp. has appointed a president for its Healthcare Payments Solutions division. John M. Reynolds, a 20-year veteran in banking and a former executive at Wells Fargo Institutional Trust Service, takes over the unit, which was formed only last …