Two prepaid card companies reported on Monday, and both said the same thing about their business without quite saying it. The consumer prepaid card, the product they were built on, is shrinking. The money is now in running card programs for someone else.
Paysign rides drug copay programs
Paysign, based in Henderson, Nevada, made its name paying plasma donors on prepaid cards. That business is flat. Third-quarter plasma revenue rose 7.5% to $13.8 million, and the number of plasma centers it serves fell from 595 to 562 over the year.
The growth is all in pharma. Paysign runs patient affordability programs, the copay assistance cards drug makers fund so patients can afford expensive brand-name medicines. Pharma revenue more than doubled to $16.6 million, up 110%, and the company now runs 167 such programs, 62 more than a year ago. Total revenue rose 43% to $30.8 million. Operating margin jumped to 23.8% from 7.3%, and net income tripled to $6.7 million, or $0.11 a share.
Paysign kept its 2026 revenue range of $114 million to $117 million and raised its profit targets, including adjusted EBITDA of $38.5 million to $40 million. Then it disclosed the catch. A plasma customer will move payment processing for 113 centers to another provider by year-end. Those centers brought in $11.3 million of revenue over the past year, more than a tenth of the total, and $5.2 million of gross profit. The fourth-quarter hit is small, about $1.5 million of revenue. The 2027 hit is not. Paysign is targeting 445 to 450 plasma centers by year-end, down sharply from where it started 2026, so the pharma business now has to carry growth on its own.
Green Dot grows on partners, not customers
Green Dot’s revenue rose 21% to $601.1 million, and it cut its net loss to $7.4 million from $30.8 million. Almost all the growth came from its B2B segment, which includes the banking-as-a-service unit that issues cards and accounts for fintech and retail partners. B2B revenue rose 30% to $474 million, led by one large partner. Green Dot doesn’t name it.
Its own consumer business went the other way. Consumer services revenue fell 8% to $81.3 million on retail weakness and lower marketing, and active accounts across the company dropped to 3.38 million from 3.51 million. Gross dollar volume rose to $47.2 billion from $39.5 billion, a sign that partner programs move a lot of money through Green Dot’s rails even as its own branded cards lose users.
There was no call and no guidance. Green Dot agreed in November 2025 to split itself in two: Smith Ventures is buying the non-bank fintech business and CommerceOne is buying Green Dot Bank. The deal still needs the Federal Reserve and state regulators in Alabama and Utah, with closing expected by the first quarter of 2027.
What it says about prepaid
The pattern is clear across both companies. A branded prepaid card sold off a rack at a drugstore is a fading product, losing users to free mobile bank accounts. What still pays is the plumbing behind other people’s programs, whether a drug maker’s copay card or a fintech’s debit account. Margins there depend on a few large clients, which is why one plasma chain leaving can dent Paysign’s next year and one large BaaS partner can drive Green Dot’s quarter. Concentration is the price of the new model.