Banking UP

Our most recent analysis of about 50,000 visits to the UPside Visa prepaid card mobile portal shows that 47% of the card holders are using an Android phone, dwarfing the iPhone which comes in at 16.5%.

Not surprisingly, a majority of prepaid Visa cardholders tend to prefer… prepaid phone accounts too. And since the iPhone only comes with postpaid subscriptions, it is not as popular as the many Android phones that are now available from prepaid wireless carriers.

Another interesting fact is the amount of mobile access: in December, we had about 50,000 visits to our mobile site versus a bit more than 200,000 visits to our “fixed” website: so, for every 5 PC users, we have someone preferring to use their cellphone to manage their money.
It is probably higher than industry averages. We believe that under-banked users will be heavier users of mobile financial services.
This is in part because staying on top of your money at all times from anywhere is more important when you don’t have a lot of money.

Modern cars have a reliable fuel gauge. Actually, they have a conservative fuel gauge: when the empty light goes on, you still have ample miles to go, so that you can find a gas station before it is too late.

Money Gauge

Not so with your bank account: even if you have online – or cell phone- access to your account, you just don’t know how much money is really left. Recent credit card transactions may not have settled yet. Checks you wrote may not have been cashed. So, your balance is usually optimistic and you don’t have as much money available as you are being told.

Your bank likes it that way: it will earn more interest on your unpaid card balance and collect fees on your unexpected overdrafts.

Collectively, banks are expecting to rack up $27B in checking account overdraft fees for the year 2009 alone.

Could your money have an accurate gauge?

If you go for an online account based on a prepaid card, like iBankUP, your balance will be accurate, thanks to the prepaid nature of the service.

As purchases are made, the balance is automatically adjusted downwards.

If you write a check against the balance of the card account, the amount of the check is also reflected right away, instead of waiting for the check to be cashed by the recipient.

You get a “no-surprise balance”. Whenever the balance is slightly off, it actually displays a lower amount than really available, either because an authorization hold from a restaurant (or, ironically, a self-serve pump at a gas station) has not been removed yet, or because a check expires or remains un-cashed.