IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jconsa/v52y2018i2p286-316.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prepaid Cards at Tax Time and Beyond: Findings and Lessons from the MyAccountCard Pilot

Author

Listed:
  • Caroline Ratcliffe
  • William J. Congdon
  • Signe‐Mary McKernan

Abstract

The MyAccountCard provides tax filers with a low‐cost prepaid card account for the electronic delivery of their tax refunds. Under the pilot, 808,099 low‐income individuals were randomly assigned to one of eight treatment groups that differ along three dimensions: (1) no monthly fee vs. $4.95 monthly fee, (2) savings account vs. no savings account, and (3) convenience vs. safety messaging. We find that individuals are price sensitive, the savings account (as designed) was not valuable, and that messaging did not influence behavior. The $4.95 fee (vs. no fee) decreased MyAccountCard take‐up by 42% and the likelihood of depositing a tax refund into the card account by 50%. Individuals with the highest propensity to be unbanked were three times more likely to take up the card and nearly 2.5 times more likely to use it to receive a tax refund as those with the lowest propensity to be unbanked.

Suggested Citation

  • Caroline Ratcliffe & William J. Congdon & Signe‐Mary McKernan, 2018. "Prepaid Cards at Tax Time and Beyond: Findings and Lessons from the MyAccountCard Pilot," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 286-316, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jconsa:v:52:y:2018:i:2:p:286-316
    DOI: 10.1111/joca.12149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12149
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/joca.12149?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jeffrey Carpenter & Emiliano Huet-Vaughn & Peter Hans Matthews & Andrea Robbett & Dustin Beckett & Julian Jamison, 2021. "Choice Architecture to Improve Financial Decision Making," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(1), pages 102-118, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jconsa:v:52:y:2018:i:2:p:286-316. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-0078 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.