Refunds on Western Union® MoneyWise™ Prepaid MasterCard

[HV Ken]

In a recent thread I was involved in, there was some mention from others that they might not be receiving certain promotional emails from CCH SFS (ATX). If you are not receiving these, you may want to contact CCH SFS and find out why. I find them to be very valuable.

Attached is a recent email I received announcing the ATX ability to offer clients their refund on a Western Union® MoneyWise™ Prepaid MasterCard. With this new option and fee collect, I can finally get out of the bank product business (even though I never offered RALs, I did need to print checks for some client's refunds)!

ATX Western Union.pdf

[HV Ken]

Just listened to the webinar on this - this looks like a great addition to the product!

[Kimberly K]

Just listened to the webinar on this - this looks like a great addition to the product!

I did the webinar yesterday, and you are right, this product is just one more step to offering what the big dogs offer. Eventhough all of my clients have their own checking accounts that their refund can be deposited in, you never know if you will get a new client that is unbanked!

[Chowdahead]

I did the webinar yesterday, and you are right, this product is just one more step to offering what the big dogs offer. Even though all of my clients have their own checking accounts that their refund can be deposited in, you never know if you will get a new client that is unbanked!

I saw this as well. My concern is that there will always be a small percentage of people whose cards get lost in the mail or stolen. That will be a hassle to deal with. Even worse if someone has used the card, since a claim has to be filed with Mastercard etc. Who knows how long that will take.

At least with the printed checks, you would give the check to the person directly in most cases, eliminating that problem. I wish they allowed the option to have the cards mailed to the tax office.

I also noticed there is a fee for ATM withdrawals. Something like $2-3, plus perhaps whatever the ATM owner charges. Might not seem like a lot, but since you can only withdraw $500.00 per day, someone with a sizable refund of $4000.00 for example, would be looking at 10 trips to the ATM over 10 days with $20-$50 in bank fees.

I think I'll just stick to checks. Might be a small hassle, but at least I usually print them in bulk. I see less and less checks every year anyway since most people have accounts.

One question I have is that in the promo material, it appeared as if this would be integrated as an option into ATX, regardless as to whether we used a Bank or not. So even if I use SBBT for ERCs/ERTs, I could still offer Western Union cards. Is this accurate?