By Nestor Remiasz


Prepaid debit cards are often criticized for not helping people develop credit. Suze Orman has said she's working on such an arrangement with her prepaid debit card. However, American Express has beaten her to the punch, as an AmEx program will help prepaid debit customers be eligible for a charge card.

A chief criticism, according to Time magazine, of prepaid debit cards is that they do not help people build a credit rating like credit cards do, which doesn't help the unbanked build credit history. Granted, that's sort of like saying that a Kia is not the best car to drive because it isn't an airplane. The same also holds true for regular debit cards; the card is tied to a checking account rather than a line of credit.

Suze Orman, super star personal finance guru has launched her own prepaid debit card. When she declared the card, which is called The Approved MasterCard, she also said that she was working on a program through credit reporting bureau TransUnion to allow card users to build credit using it. The card does, according to MSNBC, have an advantage of credit monitoring services through TransUnion, but no impact on the user's credit rating.

The new program, according to the BusinessInsider, is called Make Your Move and doesn't bolster a user's credit rating, per se, but rather functions as a trial period of sorts. If consumers meet certain criteria, they might be selected by American Express after a six-month period to be eligible to sign up for an American Express card.

Users should use the card regularly in order to get the American Express card at the end, according to Time. Users can put up to $5,000 a month on the card. The limit for withdrawing from an ATM used to be $200 per week, but that has been increased to up to $400 a day.

There four big card issuers contain American Express, Visa, MasterCard and Discover. American Express was the last of these four corporations to launch a prepaid debit card. The prepaid debit card industry just keeps growing. From 2009 to 2010 alone, the industry increased from a $48 billion industry to a $65 billion industry.

The "Make You Move" program may not be allowed to use the "Bluebird" prepaid cards that American Express is introducing at Walmart, but it is unknown for sure, according to the Wall Street Journal.




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