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Keep the Karadashians in your pocket
The Kardashian sisters: (L-R) Khloe, Kim and Kourtney.
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TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: The Kardashian sisters -- Kim, Khloe and Kourtney -- are part of that growing part of celebrity America that's famous mostly for being famous. They've built a sisterly empire of reality TV shows, fashion lines, perfumes, cosmetics, even their own diet pills.
Next week, they're going to add will add financial services to the mix. A prepaid MasterCard debit card with their likenesses on the plastic. Of course, having a Kardashian card doesn't mean you can spend like a Kardashian. But Marketplace's Stacey Vanek Smith reports, the sisters are joining a celebrity trend.
Stacey Vanek Smith: It wasn't your typical financial product launch. Here's how the Kardashian sisters pitched their new plastic on their blogs: "WOOOOHOOOO how cool is this?! Kourt, Kim and I have teamed up with Mobile Resource Card to launch our very own customized Kardashian Prepaid MasterCard!!!!"
A couple of weeks ago rapper Lil Wayne unveiled plans for a similar card. Ron Shevlin is a banking products analyst with the Aite Group. He says young consumers are great market for these cards.
Ron Shevlin: They are not great candidates for credit cards, and they are not particularly fond of writing checks. So they much prefer to use debit cards.
Which they can load and reload with cash. Card issuers like them, too. Prepaid cards aren't subject to some of the strict credit card regulations that limit fees. And the cards are being used more and more like an alternative to bank accounts and credit cards.
David Robertson publishes the Nilson Report.
David Robertson: These prepaid accounts are starting to look like more traditional checking accounts. And that's certainly where the entire prepaid card industry is headed.
The prepaid debit card industry is worth more than $120 billion. Nearly 12 million people are expected to have one by 2014. Analyst Ron Shevlin says prepaid debit cards don't bring in the big bucks credit cards did, but they do generate fees and get the kind of buzz your run-of-the-mill Platinum card just won't.
Ron Shevlin: I actually did a Google search on "Kardashian debit card" and it already has 3.8 million hits on Google.
Now that is priceless.
In New York, I'm Stacey Vanek Smith for Marketplace.
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Wow. Within days of this story, the Kard is being investigated for predatory fees (that's the nice term; "taking your money away through a whole new door" is what I'd call it), and the sisters want their names off the Kard. Well so much for that 15 minutes of fame, on to the next non-story.
I love the irony of people who are not creditworthy enough to obtain a credit card giving a portion of their money to people who already have tons of it in order to seem like they have "Kardashian" cash...or maybe cache? How pathically amusing. What was it H.L. Menken said?, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
Teens and young adults like using prepaid debit cards because it gives them financial freedom like their parents have without getting into debt and they learn how to manage their money. Teen cards like American Express Pass allow parents to set up automatic reloads or stop the cards from being used.
Like debit and credit cards, branded prepaid cards are issued by banks and accepted anywhere the branded card (American Express, MasterCard, and Visa) is accepted and have zero liability protections. Cards are also replaced if lost or stolen. Once the money runs out, the consumer can't spend anymore and must re-load funds to the card. Prepaid cards cost less in fees than a checking account and allow people to get their paychecks directly deposited onto the card. Cardholders can get real time text alerts on balances and track spending online. Funds can be loaded at retail locations nationwide or online. That's priceless.
Searching for Kardashian debit card returned 4+ million results. That's because the search is for Kardashian or debit or card.
When I searched for "Kardashian debit card", just like that, in quotes, I got 400 hits.
There is no buzz about their debit cards.
I agree with Greg C. about the bogus Google search results. Googling the words Kardashian Debit Card returns results containing all of those words, but not necessarily consecutively. For example, the page could contain an article about the Kardashians and an advertisement for another debit card. Putting the search phrase in quotes ensures the words occur consecutively. I did a search for the words Marketplace Search Expert and got 2.2 million hits, but I would be surprised if any of those returned the name Ron Shevlin.
At the end of the report someone claimed 3 million hits when googling Kardashian credit card. Bull hockey. If you google the phrase in quotes, you only get 15,000 hits. Googling the phrase without quotes gives you the union of the words "Kardashian", "credit", and "card". And even then, I get less than a million hits. How did this guy get to three million?
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