Disclosure: This is a guest post.
A prepaid debit card can be an excellent alternative to using a traditional bank account to store money. Debit cards have many advantages over bank accounts, and they can help consumers save money while they enjoy their plastic card, which works like a Visa card in many ways. One of the biggest benefits that a prepaid debit card has over a bank account is the lack of a monthly fee. Most traditional bank accounts have account maintenance fees that cause their customers’ funds to dwindle on a monthly basis. Several prepaid debit companies offer cards that yield no monthly fees. The Kaiku card is an example of one such card. The Kaiku prepaid card has no monthly fee. Therefore, cardholders have access to nearly all the funds that they place on their cards.
Some consumers are not eligible for traditional bank accounts. They may have prior problems with banking institutions, or they may be in the ChexSystems list for some past violation. Such persons can apply for prepaid debit cards and keep their money on those cards until they need to spend it on bills or other items. Prepaid debit card applications are usually quick, and the card company sends a new card within one week.
Prepaid debit cards can be beneficial alternatives to traditional bank accounts because of the way they work. Consumers load their prepaid cards with an amount of money that seems appropriate. Once they spend all of the funds that they place on the card, they have to reload it before they can use it again. Prepaid debit cards do not accrue overdraft charges like traditional bank accounts do. Traditional banks make billions of dollars off people who accidentally overdraft their accounts by a few dollars or a few cents. The average overdraft charge is $36 per incident for a traditional bank account. Most account holders with low balances will experience at least one accidental overdraft during the course of account ownership. Therefore, a consumer has the potential to avoid mishaps and funds deductions just by converting to a prepaid debit card from a regular savings or checking account.
Judy Schechter says
This sounds like an awesome debit card! I was using Greendot but that has all sorts of fees.
irish says
excellent info! thanks