InComm, the leader in sales and marketing of prepaid products, and NetSpend, a leading provider of card-based prepaid financial products to underbanked consumers, today announced a distribution agreement that will give many of InComm's retail partner locations the opportunity to sell and reload the NetSpend general purpose reloadable debit card. InComm - the industry's largest retail distribution network - will further add to NetSpend's reload network of 93,000 locations.
"According to the FDIC, more than one quarter of all Americans are either unbanked or underbanked - that's 60 million people that either have minimal or no access to financial products," said Dan Henry, CEO of NetSpend. "This agreement with InComm will give these consumers an unprecedented level of convenience with thousands more locations to reload or purchase their NetSpend cards. Simply put, this gives them the ability to more easily and quickly manage their financial lives."
"We are excited to provide our product expertise and technological innovation to help offer consumers another opportunity to manage their finances - especially in this economy," said Brooks Smith, InComm President and CEO. "Partnering with NetSpend is an excellent opportunity that reinforces InComm's commitment to the prepaid industry. By continuing to add the most innovative products and solutions, InComm is able to capitalize on consumer demand to help establish retail partners as prepaid destinations - a partnership which also gives product partners access to the industry's largest distribution network of big box, pharmacy, grocery, convenience and discount retailers."
The agreement between InComm and NetSpend will begin immediately.
Prepaid debit cards offer a viable financial alternative for the underbanked and unbanked consumer. Designed as a convenient tool to help cardholders better manage their finances, a prepaid debit card allows only the amount that is pre-deposited on the card to be spent. This feature along with free balance inquiries via text alert and online budgeting tools helps NetSpend cardholders avoid paying their share of the billions of dollars in overdraft fees that traditional banks collect every year. With this most recent announcement, NetSpend cardholders will soon be able to reload their cards at the 93,000 current locations and at the participating InComm retailers. Cardholders also have access to online bill pay, free direct deposit, free card-to-card transfers and online budgeting and spending tools.