Turn Prepaid Reloads into Relationship-Building Opportunities

by. Konrad Christensen

Walmart recently made headlines, announcing it will let customers reload other brands’ prepaid cards in their stores. At the same time, the big-box retailer also said customers no longer have to stand in line at the Walmart Money Centers to add funds to their prepaid cards. They can now reload at any cash register during the check-out process.

As another example, MoneyGram also offers customers the ability load and reload any brand’s prepaid cards, as often as they like, through their network.

While your credit union or community bank’s prepaid cardholders may be attracted to the convenience of these services, it’s wise to remind them it comes with a price tag. In fact, these reload services often are more costly than the fees associated with adding funds from a property in the card issuer’s network. Of course, we understand consumers are often willing to pay more for convenience.

So, how do you keep customers using your financial institutions’ (FI) owned networks instead of independent third parties to reload their cards? The answer is found in your customer service efforts.

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