Prepaid credit cards can serve as a lifeline for millions of unbanked Americans in need of an alternative to traditional banking, but they’re only helpful when users can actually get access to their funds. To that end, thousands of consumers who use Walmart-branded prepaid debit cards say they’ve been stranded without their funds for three days.
Consumers who depend on the Green Dot-based cards to pay bills, buy groceries, and make other purchases began experiencing problems with the system on Monday, with issues persisting as of Wednesday afternoon, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Cardholders say they have been unable to withdraw cash from ATMs, check their account balances, or make purchases.
Green Dot, which issues the prepaid debit MoneyCards for Walmart, has blamed the issue on a technical problem.
A post on Twitter explains that a processing partner is “experiencing slowdowns in some of their systems and as a result, we are currently unable to provide card balances online or over the phone.”
Despite consumers’ complaints that they’ve been unable to make purchases or withdraw cash from ATMs, Green Dot maintained in the Tweet that those actions were not impacted by the glitch.
“We understand the important role we play in the daily financial lives of our loyal customers and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” the company said.
Steve Streit, Green Dot Chief Executive, tells the L.A. Times that the issue was expected to be fixed Wednesday night.
As of Thursday morning, MoneyCard users were posting on a Facebook group called “Walmart MoneyCard Exodus” about continuing problems with the cards.
One user said she had tried to withdraw funds at least three times and was continuously declined.
“Going on day 4 soon of no money,” the poster said. “Finally was able to get someone on the phone after trying since Monday. All he could say was he was sorry and that the system update failed and caused a lot of people’s card not to work.”
“So I woke this morning, checked my balance and it say my balance is $0.00 called the 800 number says my account was negative $42.89, talked to a rep and he said I had $289.62, but I cannot use my card until issue is fixed,” another card user said.
The issues with Walmart’s Green Dot cards come months after thousands of consumers using prepaid RushCards were affected by a similar glitch.
Among other things, users reported being locked out of their accounts and that their balances suddenly showed $0.
RushCard recently entered into a settlement agreement in which the company will pay $19 million in compensation for consumers who were affected by the weeks-long outage.
Customers say Walmart-brand prepaid debit cards aren’t working, cutting off access to funds [The Los Angeles Times]
by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist
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