Green Dot Rolls Out Secured Credit Card

Green Dot announced on Thursday (Sept. 29) the launch of the Green Dot Platinum Visa Secured Credit Card, which is a secured credit card aimed at tapping the market of people with no prior credit history and those with a poor credit score who are looking to build a positive credit history.

With the Green Dot Platinum Visa Secured Credit Card, the credit line is backed by the customer’s own deposit, which is held at Green Dot Bank. Because the card is backed with a customer’s own money, anyone can apply, and most people will be approved for the card. Customers don’t have to have a bank account to use the card. The customer’s payment performance is reported to the three major credit bureaus, which, with good payment performance, can help consumers build a better credit history over time, Green Dot said a press release.

“The Green Dot Platinum Visa Secured Credit Card is just another way Green Dot Bank is helping to open the door to financial inclusion for millions of low and moderate income Americans,” said Lew Goodwin, president of Green Dot Bank, in a press release.

Green Dot pointed to the Center For Financial Services Innovation, which estimates that around 108 million Americans don’t have credit scores or have low scores that prevent them from accessing affordable credit. As a result, Green Dot is aiming to help customers with its new secured credit card.

The move on the part of Green Dot comes after details emerged this past spring about a prepaid card glitch that prevented more than 58,000 customers using Walmart branded prepaid cards from accessing funds loaded on the cards. The outage lasted several days. In addition to being unable to access funds, some customers were unable to activate new cards or view account balances. Green Dot explained in its missive that it had been in the midst of migrating processing services tied to its 2 million active prepaid accounts when the outage occurred. Green Dot said that roughly 1.2 percent of its active card base, which numbers roughly 4.8 million, had been hit by the service outage, and of the 58,000 plus that had been affected, roughly 12,600 were stymied from activating new cards or activating replacement cards. More than 41,000 accounts had transactions declined because of low balances that were reporting errors. The remaining amount — about 4,500 accounts — were calculated as they came from complaints to various regulatory agencies.