The dirty secret of the prepaid card business is that often it simply is difficult to load new funds on a card, even a reloadable one, and the difficulties multiply when those funds are in the form of a check. 

That is why Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv has announced what it calls Prepaid Source Capture, which leverages the company's mobile remote deposit capture tools.

“Putting a check on a prepaid card had not been that easy to do,” said Gary Brand, director of Source Capture Solutions at Fiserv. 

He added that of course the headline news is the velocity of growth in prepaid cards, so Fiserv spotted a need that it believes its existing mobile RDC fills. “Reloading with a check just is a neat way to go,” said Brand.

What the Fiserv offering does is bring the RDC tools that have been revolutionizing mobile banking squarely into the prepaid universe.

As envisioned by Fiserv, a prepaid card company will offer its customers a mobile app, built into which will be mobile RDC (powered by Mitek-created algorithms, in Fiserv's case).  The card owner then can make a deposit simply by snapping an image of the front and back of a check. 

A Fiserv wrinkle is that – at the option of the prepaid card processor – funds can be made immediately available. 

That is because Fiserv, in brewing this offering, partnered with Fort Worth, Texas-based VALID Systems to build in what amounts to real-time verification of an item for deposit. “They run 60,000 rules against an item and return a decision very quickly,” said Brand.

A card processor of course would also have the ability to put holds on deposited items, as it saw fit, said Brand.

Brand said Fiserv intended to target prepaid card companies as its primary market when the company rolls out the product late in the second quarter or early in the third. 

As for costs to the consumer for using the mobile RDC tools, Brand said that decision would be made by the card processor.

Fiserv would not be first to market with this capability for prepaid cards. At least some prepaid cards already feature mobile RDC, a notable for-instance being American Express' Bluebird.