Late in 2013, some offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement announced it was going to offer a debit card and managed to generate a huge amount of press, receiving coverage from ABC News, the NYT, and CNN, among others. It even got some coverage in certain disreputable blogs.
The goal was to raise $900,000 and then launch a debit card which would allow the group to more effectively stick it to The Man, or give power to the people, or whatever the heck their goal was.
The problem was that their product, even on the drawing board, was inferior. As I wrote at the time,
Compare their fees to the Bluebird prepaid debit card. Bluebird is issued by American Express, which is headquartered just a few blocks from Wall Street. Bluebird doesn’t have any of those fees. It’s probably the most fee-free prepaid card out there. They’ve even been giving away checkbooks for free. It is equal or superior to the Occupy card in every way.
So where do things stand now? Apparently they don’t stand at all. The Occupy Money Cooperative website has been abandoned and is apparently now owned by somebody in Asia. I don’t see any mention of the debit card after that initial flurry of coverage.
It’s our loss, too, because they were only going to charge $2.80 for a credit card load. That actually would have helped stick it to The Man. Alas…
I liked the idea of the movement, but it lacked direction and a working agenda…. hanging out in a downtown day camp & tweeting and facebooking about revolution was fun, but who pays the rent? The cell phone bill?