Plastyc Makes Debit Cards a Small Biz Reality

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Prepaid debit cards?! Like the Visa(V) or MasterCard(MA) versions I can buy at Wal-Mart(WMT)? For my small business? Say what?

White-hot, prepaid debit card giant Green Dot(GDOT) raked in a cool $164 million from rabid investors when its stock went public earlier this summer. Now a flock of third-party startups, looking for the same investor love, are finding traction in financial services that were once strictly for the under-banked -- usually kids and those with low credit scores. These firms are morphing prepaid debit cards into a new generation of innovative financial instruments. And, I'm surprised to say, they're slowly finding real play for small businesses.

One of the most interesting of this new generation of smart prepaid debit card companies is tiny, New York-based Plastyc. The four-person firm brands its prepaid debit cards as the UPside Visa Prepaid Card. And through a clever series of co-branding, outsourcing and Web development deals, the firm has recently rolled out a legitimate virtual banking site called iBankUP.

I sat down for drinks, and a demo, with company CEO Patrice Peyret last week. And I find though some of Plastyc's services are of limited small-business use, some features are pretty darn attractive.

WHAT YOU GET Plastyc, though its UPside brand of prepaid debit cards and iBankUP Web portal, offers an easy way to manage the cash employers must extend to employees to do their jobs.

iBankUP gives firms a fast, secure way to get, say, $50 in the hands of a remote employee without messing with checks, third-party credit cards or crazy-expensive wire transfers such as those found at Western Union(WU).