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Comment by FluidDjango | Hacker News Reader

Someone mentioned in a TechCrunch comment that there are other (up-and-coming) start-ups working on models that may be more customer-friendly.

Anyone know of competitors to green dot?

...I'd like to hear about some alternate business models being used for these services.

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Yes. Another prepaid card company called NetSpend filed to IPO this year too. The original founders of NetSpend, Roy and Bertrand Sosa, are hispanic immigrants and pioneered the prepaid model before GreenDot after recognizing a gap in the industry. As the story goes, they created NetSpend with only $750 in their apartment living room.

They later left NetSpend to found MPOWER Group in 2007. Our company was acquired by one of the MPOWER companies this year, and we couldn't be happier about the leadership and long-term vision here. The Sosa brothers are extremely genuine people. This time they're taking a closer look at banking and underserved markets, and it's a great time for the right kind of innovation in this industry if you ask me.

Last ~2 years have been spent building out product and a multinational infrastructure, I think you'll start hearing more about MPOWER in the near future as they ramp up marketing and social media efforts here in the States.

http://www.mpowerlabs.com http://www.mangomoney.com http://www.revworldwide.com http://www.yapsend.com

Simon Malls sells non-refillable American Express cards for $2.99; no monthly fee. There is no billing address associated with the credit card and in person at their malls they don't check ID for orders under a certain dollar amount.

http://www.simon.com/giftcard/

They are able to do this because the amount of balance on the card, and the features of the card (not certain which ones) allow them to operate this card as a gift card, rather than a "Bank Account" which is what the PATRIOT ACT defines the other such cards as.

AccountNow is another one and has a much higher limit for how much you can fund to your account and keep there ($10,000 vs $2,500.) These services are quite valuable for people who are unable to get checking accounts because they got themselves reported to the "chex system" which is basically the equivalent of a bad credit report but only used by banks.

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