Millennials with Money: A New Look at Who Uses GPR Prepaid Cards

Abstract

Phoenix Marketing International is a top 40 Honomichl market research company that annually fields an omnibus financial services survey that collects information from a representative sample of American households. Beginning in 2012, the survey added a series of questions designed to gather data on ownership and use of general-purpose reloadable (GPR) prepaid cards. This paper reports on those findings, including the discovery of a "power user" segment of the market composed of young and mid- to upper-income consumers who own and use GPR cards at rates well above the market average. Younger adults also appear to be combining both mainstream and alternative financial services in ways that complicate some attempts to classify consumers as "banked" or "underbanked."

Keywords: General-purpose prepaid cards, Millennials, personal financial management, electronic payments

JEL Classification: D1