Green Dot has been around for some time. It was founded in 1999 and despite the competitive frenzy in the payments space, the company has been able to continually innovate and grow. In its most recent earnings announcement, Green Dot achieved $14.3 million in net income in the 4th quarter of 2018 along with a 17 percent year-over-year revenue increase.
The core to Green Dot’s business is debit card transactions along with key corporate partnerships that drive significant volume, such as its partnership with Walmart and related Walmart MoneyCard program. Expansion is expected to continue well into 2019. Other partnerships include its collaboration with Intuit and Turbo Tax enabling users to receive tax refunds on a prepaid Visa card issued by Green Dot.
The company’s prepaid card products are available at 100,000 retail stores including large pharmacy chains such as CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens as well as discount stores such as Dollar Tree and Walmart. Green Dot got its start catering to what was termed the “unbanked” and “underbanked” communities.
Its most recent innovation has been its focus on Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) which consists of linking Intuit users with full-service bank accounts. The partnership would enable small business owners to pay their own employees in a more cost-effective way. In addition to its BaaS efforts, Steve Streit, the company’s president and CEO, intends to pursue growth aggressively through M&A strategy, new hires and promotions in the executive ranks, and a continued drive to improve Green Dot’s underlying infrastructure.
During its recent earnings call, the company honed in on its efforts to sell directly to consumers, catering to Generation Z’s strong preferences for digital financial services, and connecting with them indirectly via broadened BaaS initiatives. Green Dot has orchestrated plans to present to the market a next generation of its BaaS platform, which is slated to occur in 2019. Top of mind for the company is integrating an enhanced user experience and seamless interconnectivity across multiple apps in the BaaS platform ecosystem. By 2020, Green Dot will continue on its cycle of continuous BaaS platform upgrades while also emphasizing risk controls and compliance.
