Necessity as the Mother of Invention: Prepaid Cards Find New Use Cases in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the way that people shopped and paid for purchases. Under these new circumstances, the U.S. prepaid market experienced significant
innovation and developed new use cases for its products. As vaccines have been made available but uptake has lagged, state and local governments have made use of prepaid
cards to incentivize vaccination. The pandemic has caused significant hardship for many communities in the U.S., and prepaid cards have played an important role in the distribution financial aid from both government and charitable institutions to those in need. Moving forward, the prepaid market has numerous opportunities to contribute to the process of economic recovery in the United States.