28/4/2016/MasterCard
April is National Financial Capability Month in the U.S., a time for us to focus on efforts to promote resources that help Americans make informed financial decisions. MasterCard supports financial capability initiatives around the world, and, in the U.S., we have focused a number of efforts particularly on the Direct Express ® program. This program, a partnership between the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Comerica Bank, and MasterCard, provides several million Americans with a safe and reliable way to receive federal benefit payments electronically on a MasterCard prepaid card. The vast majority of these cardholders are unbanked, and many are totally disabled, making them among the most vulnerable Americans—and among those with the most to gain from increased financial capability.
Access to information about one’s finances is essential to financial capability. In late 2014, Treasury, Comerica, and MasterCard agreed that the time was right to offer Direct Express cardholders a new channel—a mobile application—to access information about their accounts. A number of insights drove our team to this conclusion. Prior to the development of the app, the easiest way for a cardholder to access this information was through a toll-free telephone call to an automated voice-response unit. While this was adequate when the program began, we knew we could provide greater convenience with an app.
We also concluded that by giving cardholders easier access to account balance information, we could promote increased use of the card as a payment tool, rather than a cash-access tool. This, we hoped, would drive financial inclusion and financial capability, as cardholders would enjoy the safety and security benefits of cards vs cash, increase their ability to transact online, save money on fees, and generally participate more fully in the full range of economic activity most Americans take for granted.
Click here to read full article
