Lowering fees in the payments industry

Prepaid cards is one of the fastest growing segments of the payments industry. Here at Cascade, we are at the forefront of a sector that has historically been criticized for charging high fees.

A recent blog post by the Wall Street Journal quotes Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com as saying “The prepaid-card landscape had long been characterized by high-fee offerings, but in a change that has certainly benefited the consumer the past few years, we have seen new offers come to market with simpler and more transparent fee structures.”

While many other prepaid cards charge for things like, making purchases, calling customer service, and even replacing your card, we have chosen a simple fee structure for the Cascade Prepaid MasterCard^®. We have four fees- two to get a card (one for the primary card and one for optional companion cards) and then only two other fees: $4.99 per month service charge and $1.50 to get cash from an ATM* or bank teller.

For a full list of our fee schedule, click here.                                                       *3rd party network fees may apply

Some insight from Cascade CEO, Spencer Schmerling; “At Cascade, we love talking to our customers and want to be sure that every customer has the opportunity to ask us any questions they may have about our revolutionary new CrowdFunded CashBack model. When I saw the fees that were being charged in the prepaid industry, I was blown away. I knew right away that, at Cascade, we would not nickel and dime our cardholders.”

What Spencer points out is yet another example of the fees that were traditionally associated with prepaid cards. He stuck by his declaration and our current fee structure is extremely simple, affordable and transparent.