Green Dot Announces Distribution Deals for GoBank and Prepaid Cards

Green Dot Corp. is expanding its distribution and marketing for both its GoBank mobile banking product and its traditional general purpose prepaid cards.

From Digital Transactions:

Green Dot cards will be sold through 20,000 more retail stores, including locations belonging to Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Home Depot. These deals, which the company expects to have live by Christmas, will increase the company’s store count by one-third, to more than 80,000. Green Dot will also market its card products to inner-city customers through a trio of check-cashing chains in New York City in a program called “Project Outreach.”

The expanded distribution for its prepaid cards will provide an opportunity for the company to pick up additional card volume, but it will put Green Dot in direct competition with companies like AccountNow in the Dollar Store Niche. While Green Dot certainly has the size to compete, it does mean the new channels are not a guarantee of large volume increases.

For GoBank, good marketing and distribution will be essential. Green Dot is trying to reach out to college students, which is an intuitive, though potentially fickle, audience.

To reach college students, GoBank will also be available via the Apple Inc. App Store and will be marketed through Barnes & Noble college bookstores, Streit added. … Champion surfer Bethany Hamilton has agreed to be a spokesperson for the product, he said.

The college audience is likely to have many members that have adopted mobile technology and view banking as something that can be handled electronically. They are a good starting place for Green Dot as it moves into banking and looks to compete with players like Simple.

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