Suze Orman Doing Own Debit Card

Rather than just handing out advice, personal finance expert Suze Orman, who hosts a show on CNBC, is now offering debit cards to consumers with her name on them.

She announced today the launch of the First Approved Card from Suze Orman, an initiative that she reportedly invested $1 million of her own money in.

“It's the single most important thing I've done in my whole career,” Orman says in a release about the card, adding that she considers the card part of a “people first” movement and that consumers are “tired of not getting fair financial deals."

Such prepaid debit cards are often aimed at people who don't have good credit, or at parents who want to give their teens a set amount of money rather than handing them a credit card.

The Approved Card lets users receive text and email alerts after every transaction, daily or weekly, as well as account balance updates every morning. It doesn’t charge fees for activation unlike other such cards that charge as much as $9, Orman says. Nor does it charge users for cancellation or inactivity. (In November 2010, the Kardashian sisters cut their alliance with a prepaid debit card from MasterCard after outcry about the $7.95 monthly fee among other charges). It’s covered by the MasterCard zero liability policy for lost and stolen cards and offers identity theft protection, plus free access to TransUnion credit scores with unlimited updates.

It is available for $3 per month for up to four cards.

The fact that Orman is offering the card is raising eyebrows, in part because it doesn’t look as if it is charging enough of a fee to be profitable and in part because of her role as a TV host that advises people on money matters.

As the New York Times wrote:

How can the Approved card make money charging fees on par with those on Walmart’s cut-rate MoneyCard, while also paying a credit bureau for access to its services? Also, can it really be just fine with CNBC, where Ms. Orman has a weekly show, that her card will compete with products from companies she discusses frequently with viewers? And will her followers care that she is pushing purple pieces of plastic that will help her make money from their everyday spending?

Orman told the Times that she will not be promoting the card on her CNBC show—although she talked up its launch on Good Morning America this morning. A CNBC spokesperson said that there are guidelines in place to make sure that her show “maintains its editorial integrity.”

In an interview with Good.com, Orman says she hopes the alliance with TransUnion, which marks the first time a prepaid debit card will share information with a major credit board can lead to a change in the way people’s credit scores are calculated to “create a new score that takes into consideration people who don’t want to have a credit card, people who want to pay for things with cash, people who just want to use debit cards."

She believes current credit scores do not take into account those who use debit cards and cash, who are penalized as opposed to those who use plastic.

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Teresa Novellino writes for Portfolio.com