Card.com is focusing on the CEOS and CFOs of America — meaning mothers.
The Santa Monica, Calif.-based prepaid card provider announced a Series C raise of $9 million yesterday, which will enable it to build out a host of new features in 2016, according to CEO Ben Katz, a Green Dot veteran.
The company’s product is a prepaid Mastercard with a number of brand options to choose from on the front — or users can upload their own graphics. (Insert picture of your cat here.) The monthly fee of $5.95 is waived with direct deposit. Other fees are listed here. Accounts are held at The Bancorp.
A look at the array of card choices available on Card.com (along with preconceived notions) might point to a customer base dominated by tech-forward millennials, seemingly uninterested in credit or dealing with big banks, and in love with debit cards and mobile apps.
Nope.
“76% of our customers are women, and the vast majority of them are mothers,” Katz told Bank Innovation, describing the company as “the bank for busy mothers. We want to focus on mothers. We believe they’re the core of our economy and the CFO and CEO of most households.” With a realtime tech stack built on Amazon Web Services, Card.com is often able to “predict intent due to intensive use of social graph data,” Katz said. “We can pinpoint someone approaching a major life event and reach out to them.”
Part of what distinguishes mothers from other groups of users is their heavy social media use. “Mothers like to use Facebook, to share photos of their kids — they’re very social,” Katz said. “There are almost 7,000 banks in this country and not one of them is focused on mothers or parents.” Perhaps the only bank with as focused a customer base is USAA, which serves members of the military. Card.com will emulate USAA in focusing on the needs of its base, and it has two major product launches planned for 2016 along these lines.
In January, Card.com will introduce subaccounts for children and dependents. This is a familiar feature in the prepaid world, with family-friendly budgeting services such as FamZoo, but is disappointingly rare in the world of traditional banks. Additionally, around tax season, the company plans to offer a fee-free savings account with savings goals — “envelopes for budgets,” as Katz put it.
More than 100,000 Card.com accounts have been opened, Katz said. Opening an account does not require a credit check and approval can be near-instant. 100,000 customers would almost certainly make Card.com larger than GoBank and Moven, both of which Katz praised highly. “It’s very early days,” he said of mobile banking, noting that both GoBank and Moven will be successful in the long run, because they offer more than what Katz described as the commoditized, fee-laden services offered by branch-based banks.
Katz also said he was bullish on Square, and would buy the stock even at its mid morning high of $14. “I’m a huge believer in Square’s brand,’ he said. “They have changed the world for serving small businesses. What they have created in five years, what they have achieved in brand, simplicity, software — for small businesses the world before Square can’t even be contemplated.”