Green Dot Sees More Green; Pasadena Company Heads Towards $1 Billion in Sales This Year

Pasadena-based online banking and holding company Green Dot is seeing a lot more green these days.

The company last week reported a 16% increase in total operating revenues this past quarter, at $258.3 million, along with a net income of $29.8 million, according to second quarter 2018 financial results.

Green Dot said its new business partners include Apple, Intuit Inc., Paypal, and Uber, adding to its roster of long-term partners Dollar General, Family Dollar, 7-Eleven, Rite Aid, Albertsons and Walgreen stores.

Green Dot also launched a new placement of the Walmart MoneyCard at the check lanes and 600 incremental Walmart stores and Green Dot products, and services can now be found in all Walmart Puerto Rico stores, Green Dot Founder and CEO Steve Streit said during the company’s second quarter earnings call.

“Our long-term strategic plan to be a ‘new kind of bank’ is yielding very impressive organic results,” said Streit this week, explaining, “We mean a bank that uses technology, ubiquitous digital and retail brick and mortar distribution and large partnerships to acquire customers instead of branches, and that generates revenue from increasing customer satisfaction, not from increasing customer penalty fees.”

“The strong momentum in the account services segment, including strong results from both the products and platform parts of our business, and the processing and settlement segment,… combined once again to deliver truly outstanding organic results for the quarter,” added Mark Shifke, Green Dot’s Chief Financial Officer.

“The company’s strong performance enables us to once again raise both top and bottom line full year guidance for 2018,” said Shifke

Green Dot now expects its full-year total operating revenues to be between $1.022 billion and $1.032 billion, versus its previous guidance range of $1.002 billion and $1.012 billion, according to a press release issued Wednesday. Green Dot expects total operating revenues to be approximately $222 million for the fourth quarter, around $232 million for the third quarter, Shifke said.

The company’s new BaaS (Banking as a Service) platform, which allows outside partners to use Green Dot’s bank, technology, and program management capabilities to design and brand their own products, adding to much of the company’s strength, Shifke added.

According to the trade newsletter DigitalTransactions.net, Green Dot supplies a virtual prepaid card that customers of Apple’s person-to-person payments service use for funding, although neither Apple nor Green Dot have disclosed detailed metrics about the program, which competes with PayPal Holdings Inc.’s Venmo, the bank-sponsored Zelle, Square Inc.’s Cash app, and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Pay Send.

“This year we’re benefiting from the revenue that those new BaaS programs are generating, said Shifke. “So if you will, last year’s fourth quarter was planting time for those new programs, whereas this year’s fourth quarter is expected to be harvest time.”

Through its six revenue divisions plus Green Dot Bank, Green Dot is a leading provider of prepaid cards, debit cards, checking accounts, secured credit cards, payroll debit cards, consumer cash processing services, wage disbursements and tax refund processing services.

Green Dot has approximately 100,000 major name U.S. retail stores selling its products.

With its headquarters in Pasadena, Green Dot Corporation has additional facilities throughout the United States and in Shanghai, China.