“American Express has partnered with Wal-Mart Stores on its newest product, a prepaid debit card, Bluebird, that’s now on sale in 4,000 outlets nationwide. Customers can add money to Bluebird at Walmart stores or online and use the card anywhere AmEx plastic is accepted. It’s targeted mainly at the 68 million Americans the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. defines as “underbanked” or “unbanked””
“An Ernst & Young survey in March found that 58 percent of customers now bank with more than one company, up 9 percentage points from 2011. AmEx hopes that ferment gives it a chance to compete with banks in the mobile payments market, regarded as the industry’s next frontier, without any of the costs of maintaining bricks-and-mortar locations. “Bluebird is another iteration of the trend that technological advances are allowing you to reimagine what financial services might look like,” says Dan Schulman, the AmEx executive in charge of enterprise growth, which includes the Serve program. Serve allows for instant person-to-person payments via e-mail, text message, and Facebook. “The banking system of yesterday, with branches as the mainstay, is really in many ways not necessary,” he says.”
An astonishingly large number – estimated at over 80% – of Walmart customers pay by cash today
The Bluebird Website does a crisp job explaining all the value points of the card
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