NEW YORK—Two new surveys offer new insights into prepaid cards and the use of finance apps.
The first study found prepaid cards gained more popularity last year, capturing nearly 5% of the U.S. market based on payment card annual dollar volume.
Overall, purchase volume on credit, charge, debit and prepaid cards tallied to nearly $7 trillion in 2018.
“Very few, including payment executives, can name the big guns in prepaid. While there are some plain vanilla Visa and Mastercard prepaid cards, most are white labeled and/or issued for retailer branding, mostly stores and gas cards but the list is endless and growing,” CardTrak said, citing Nilson Report 2018 data that show prepaid issuer rankings: #1 The Bancorp Bank; #2 MetaBank; #3 Green Dot; #4 Comerica Bank and #5 JPMorgan Chase.
Finance App Usage
Meanwhile, a separate study has found more than three-quarters of consumers in the U.K. use a use some sort of finance app, according to a new study.
A report from Speedie Consultants shows 24% of those surveyed use their finance apps approximately twice a week, while another 23% said they use it daily.
The most common finance app users were aged 25-45, in addition to consumers over 65.
“This leads a vast majority of consumers to use banking apps, largely because using apps is easier than logging in from a desktop and enables them to quickly check account balances; it's faster than if they were to go to a bank branch, for example,” Business Insider said