Suze Orman has announced the introduction of her own debit card. The new debit card will allow users to have their own debit card without having to qualify for a checking account.
Many of us may be familiar with the popular Suze Orman, a talk show host who gives financial advice to her viewers on the show. She tends to focus on spending less than you earn, and occasionally she endorsed a particular loan provider or brokerage firm. But now for the first time ever Suze Orman is releasing her own debit card, which will be called the “Approved Card.”
The Approved Card is not quite the same as a debit card but is close. It functions like a debit card but is not attached to any checking account. Instead users prepay to load the card up with funds. This is similar to Walmart’s branch out into the financial world, which they call the MoneyCard. Target customers for the Approved Card and the MoneyCard are people who have been hit with credit difficulties or who have had problems maintaining their credit so that banks are not willing to provide them with checking accounts. The cards also can target people who are fresh out of college or just starting in life who will have little to no credit history.
With most financial services that get offered to people who have bad credit many people often first ask, “what’s the catch?” But the goal with Suze Orman’s new card is to provide something for her loyal fans with little to no “catch” involved. The goal here is to broaden the debit card market, which means offering the card with low fees and new services. The new card may even offer customers access to their credit report as part of the service. Ms. Orman has already invested over a million dollars of her own personal funds into the project, and she is expecting to funnel in even more.
“I couldn’t be more proud of this card if I tried,” she said. “And it doesn’t really matter what I say. It matters what happens when somebody uses this baby.”
Some may question how Ms. Orman can afford to launch such an expensive project and still have a return on her investment. With such low fees and excellent services it may seem impossible for the card to make any money. But some experts believe that what the card doesn’t make in high fees it will make in volume. With the changing landscape of American finance over the past year, many customers who have previously been fed up with new fees and account balance minimums from regular banks are looking for alternatives. This new Approved Card can tap into that market by providing the alternative of the prepaid card to fed up citizens.
In the past, prepaid cards have typically been marketed to teens or to others who have difficulty getting cards to make online purchases. But now with the new market of customers looking for ways to stop supporting big banks many financial companies may start trying to go the prepaid card route.
Time will only tell if this ambitious new venture be a success for Ms. Orman, or if she will have really overestimated the market for this new financial venue. But whatever the outcome may be financially it will still likely increase popularity of Ms. Orman’s show, so either way she will gain something from her production of the card.
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