HN Explorer

Ask HN: Best banking partner for issuing prepaid debit cards

9 points by jqpabc123 ↗ HN
My startup needs to pay thousands of hourly contractors. I would prefer to issue each of them a refillable, prepaid debit card with funds to be added on an ongoing basis at low cost.

Any suggestions for a banking partner to work with --- preferably one with an API so I can automate the entire process?

14 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] thread
phphphphp
Are you sure that prepaid debit cards are in the best interests of the contractors? There’s a bunch of consumer challenges associated with pre-paid debit cards, so you may find you’re doing your contractors a disservice. Have you spoken to the contractors to understand what’s best for them?
jqpabc123
Are you sure that prepaid debit cards are in the best interests of the contractors?

Not entirely but most other options have hidden costs as well.

fire
just curious, if you have thousands of hourly contractors, why is using an actual payroll system not an option?
jqpabc123
Unecessary expense. These are 1099 contractors who are responsible for their own taxes. I just need an inexpensive way to transfer funds to them.
naturalauction
Not sure if it would work well for paying hourly contractors (they were credit cards so can't be used at an atm), but i've had good luck with creating lots of cards with Divvy in the past. They support weekly/monthly/all-time spending limits so you can control how much they spend and while they didn't have an API they didn't have a problem with me automating it myself.
jqpabc123
Looks interesting but the "credit" aspect tends to complicate things and doesn't really fit my needs.
rdtwo
That’s so predatory most of the options hit them with high fees and such. Even the government stimulus ones were got were scamy as heck. I think you got one free transaction and then got hit with crazy fees.
nrmitchi
There are a number of providers in this space at the moment, but as other commenters pointed out, actual-pre-paid cards are likely to be inconvenient for your end users due to the fees/limitations that are often associated with them.

There are other options to account-backed cards (associated with an account at the provider), can probably offer what you need as well, with many more benefits. It's kind of dependent on what your actual use-case, and user profile, is.

Options here range in terms of your program management responsibility and integration requirements, but include options like Marqeta, Unit, Bond, Stripe Treasury/Issuing, etc.

Honestly, you should probably try to talk to each potential provider and determine which offering matches the program you're actually trying to offer the closest. There is a lot of variety in the space in terms of small program details, which do matter.

Feel free to email me (email in my profile) with more specific details of what you're looking for and I may be able to point you in a more specific direction.

Disclaimer: I work for one of the options mentioned here

jqpabc123
Thanks. You have given me some names I hadn't considered.
t-3
Please don't. There are many firms handling payroll, contract one. Don't do things like stealing money from your workers by forcing them into prepaid card schemes.
jqpabc123
Outsourced payroll typically costs $2-4 per employee per pay cycle. A big part of these provider's focus centers around taxes and government compliance which don't apply since these are 1099 contractors responsible for their own taxes. In some cases, the workers are outside the country.

Regarding stealing money from your workers --- outsourced payroll may be an option but the workers themselves will ultimately pay the price for the unnecessary overhead and expense.

Irongirl1
Try Routable.com. They don't issue debit cards as far as I know...but they do specialize in cheap batch payments. They might have a solution for you ...I know they have an API per their landing page.

Hth

Bkwlf