CFPB: Prepaid Complaints Spike in May
Although the overall number of prepaid card-related complaints continues to represent less than 1 percent of total complaints the CFPB receives, prepaid complaints were up 28 percent in May to 226 from 177 the previous month, according to the federal consumer protection agency’s latest monthly complaint report.
That represents the report’s largest percentage increase in complaints by product category; however, prepaid card complaints in total are dwarfed by complaints about other products. By comparison, complaints about credit cards decreased 0.6 percent month-over-month to 1,981. The complaint increase coincides with a service outage that resulted in balance inquiry or activation errors and some declined transactions for some cardholders of Walmart MoneyCards issued by Green Dot Bank. The CFPB report did not specifically mention that incident, although senators last week called on the companies to explain the issues and how they responded.
The May uptick in prepaid complaints follows a 27 percent decrease in April to 177 complaints compared with March, according to the CFPB. That decline represented the largest monthly decrease by product type in April.
For the three months between March and May 2016, prepaid complaints averaged 215 per month, an increase of 13.8 percent compared with the 189-per-month average for the same period in 2015.
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