CFSI Outlines Three Policy Recommendations That Would Improve Consumer Protections on Prepaid Cards  

On the day the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) officially opens its doors for business, CFSI released a set of policy recommendations for the CFPB aimed at extending consumer protections to General Purpose Reloadable (GPR) prepaid cards.   

CFSI has been studying the evolution of the prepaid card industry since 2004. In our latest white paper, Prepaid Cards and Consumer Protections, CFSI makes the following recommendations for GPR cards:  

1. Require all GPR prepaid card providers to list the fees for their products in a standardized and easy to understand fee disclosure box, similar to the "Schumer Box" for credit cards.     
2. Require that all GPR prepaid cards have FDIC insurance protection.    
3. Ensure that consumers have routine access to information about the money in their GPR prepaid cards and that they have protections on their funds like those that are afforded to traditional accounts.

Click here to read the paper in its entirety.     

American Banker: Durbin's Unintended Consequence for the Underbanked    

The Federal Reserve has finalized some new interchange rules in an attempt to keep large banks from abusing the interchange cap exemption for reloadable prepaid cards. By doing this, they have also affected the prepaid debit card market. Under the new laws, banks cannot claim exemption if the prepaid cards they issue provide access to funds by check, ACH or wire transfer. This may make things even more difficult for underserved consumers gain access to the multifaceted products they need to get ahead financially.

Read CFSI President and CEO Jennifer Tescher's article in its entirety here.  

The Mobile Opportunity: Extending Financial Services to Underbanked Consumers Webinar

Nearly 100% of the U.S. population owns a mobile phone today. At the same time, 26% of U.S. households are either unbanked or underbanked. Can mobile phones be used to bridge the financial services access gap - or at least to improve the financial lives of those 26%? Join us on September 13 at 1 pm CST for a webinar featuring key innovators in mobile financial services, as well as CFSI's latest research on this topic.

Click here to register.

CFSI's strategic partner Core Innovation Capital's Managing Partner Arjan Schütte blogs on important issues affecting underbanked consumers as well as innovative financial services products. This month, read about Arjan's one man campaign to eradicate APR when it comes to short-term lending and the finalists of the Core Underbanked Innovators Challenge.

Plastyc Looking for VP Business Development   

BAI: Transparency in Interest for Low-Income Borrowers

In this BAI article, Arjan Schütte, Managing Partner of Core Innovation Capital, explains how his proposed TRUST system for evaluating short-term loans could help end the partisan conflicts between consumer lenders, consumer advocates, regulators and innovators who are inhibited from moving forward while the metric APR stands between them. By adopting the TRUST system for evaluating loans, lower-income consumers ultimately stand to gain from transparency and access to better financial products.