Posted by Lisa Hochgraf
Last week I worked from CUES headquarters in Madison, Wis., rather than my home office in Rochester, N.Y. When I stopped at a grocery not far from CUES Madison to pick up birthday treats for a colleague, I was impressed by something I saw in the checkout lane: I'll call it a "cards buffet."
Right then and there I could have bought off the candy and magazine rack a $20 branded, prepaid card for one of these major retailers: Starbucks, Babies R Us; Bed, Bath and Beyond; Blockbuster; Kohls; or Old Navy. I could also have purchased a prepaid, rechargeable MasterCard.
As those of you who read my "Confessions of a Credit Card Holder" post know, I really like pretty plastic. And these cards definitely qualified. (They even had matching card envelopes.) But while I was impressed with the look of these cards, I was even more impressed with how convenient this presentation was: a variety of options there for my purchase; no additional fees.
The last time Credit Union Management magazine checked in on credit unions' prepaid card offerings (for our March 2006 issue, see "Gift Cards"), the CUs interviewed were having a lot of success with gift card sales, particularly right before the holiday season.
But no one seemed to be offering a year-round card buffet. Would having a rack at each teller station be out of the question? And the credit unions in the article talk about the service fee that gift card purchasers paid: about $3 to $5 per card. In the grocery, the charge was $20, even, all of it on the card.
Maybe there's an opportunity here -- to make gift card offerings more broad and more convenient?
Prepaid cards may fit credit unions better than one might think. This post suggests that the cards can be a way to help people trying to build or rebuild their credit. Seems like credit unions and their members could both benefit from diving deeper into marketing in this arena.
P.S. Related to my "Confessions" post mentioned earlier, my Bank of America Platinum card did arrive. I haven't activated it.
