Decoupled Debit Card
In May 2007, the company began an experiment that came to be known as a decoupled debit card. This card is novel in that prior to this launch, a debit card was always tied to a traditional financial institution, such as a bank or credit union.
CapitalOne's Visa-branded decoupled card did not require that an account be opened with a "merchant" financial institution, and was made in partnership with the Ukrop's Super Markets, a Richmond-based grocery-store chain, and Sheetz, a regional gas-station and convenience-store chain. The Ukrops card was also tied to the grocer's reward program.
That one-year experiment ended in May 2008, and was followed up with a national rollout of its own version of a decoupled debit card tied to its own reward program.
Read more about this topic: Capital One
Famous quotes containing the words debit and/or card:
“Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a special relation with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.”
—Andrei Codrescu (b. 1947)