You could buy a Green Dot card off a rack at Walmart, Walgreens, CVS or 7-Eleven and load your paycheck onto it. For millions of Americans without a bank account, that card was the bank. By March 2010 Green Dot counted 3.4 million active cards, the most of any prepaid provider in the country. That July, with the financial crisis still fresh and banks out of favor, it went public.

Founded on the Unbanked

Steve Streit founded the company in October 1999 to sell and service prepaid debit cards. A general-purpose reloadable card worked like a debit card, but anyone could get one without a credit check. Green Dot's real asset was the checkout aisle. Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Kroger and others sold its cards and took reloads at the register. The bet was that prepaid cards would grow into a mainstream way to bank.

Thirty-Six Dollars and a Bank

Green Dot priced at $36 a share in July 2010 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as GDOT. Class B shares carried ten votes each. It bought a small Utah bank, which let it issue its own cards and run banking for partners such as Apple Pay Cash. Streit stepped down as chief executive in 2020. In November 2025 Green Dot agreed to sell itself to CommerceOne Financial, with its payments business going to Smith Ventures. Shareholders approved in June 2026.

Cover: Chromatic Circle, Paul Signac. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a color wheel of dots (Green Dot).