…the number of “unbanked” and “underbanked” people is growing rapidly in the current economic crisis. The Mercator Advisory Group, a research service focused on the credit and payments industry, estimated in November that the volume of transactions on general-purpose prepaid cards totaled more than $4 billion in 2008. It forecasts an increase to $7.2 billion in 2009 and $10.8 billion in 2010.
And this would seem to underestimate things by a wide margin:
“The rapid growth squares with what we see in the marketplace,” said Mark Troughton, president of cards and networks at Green Dot, “but we find the totals too low. We did more than $4 billion by ourselves last year.”
A lot of this growth can for sure be attributed to the steep and continuing rise in unemployment
Better source those New York Times articles. You don't want the Gray Lady's copyright lawyers up your keester!
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