Advisory Council
Steve
Streit
President
and CEO, Green Dot Corporation
Steve Streit is the founder of Green Dot Corporation and a pioneer in the prepaid card industry. His original and uniquely innovative idea for a prepaid debit card to be sold at retail originated from his experience as a content consultant to Internet companies in late 1999. At that time, he recognized that many visitors to online stores did not have a credit card, and thus his clients had no way to monetize their web sites. Within 18 months, Steve introduced a ground-breaking new product concept into the marketplace: a reloadable prepaid debit card available at retail. Today, Green Dot products are available in more than 50,000 retailer locations -- including Wal-Mart, Walgreens, CVS/Pharmacy, Rite Aid, Radio Shack, Kroger, Ralphs, Food4Less and Fred Meyer.
A key driver in Steve's original idea is this: there is a huge population of Americans who earn less than $50,000 a year and who are underserved by the financial services industry. Banks, with their myriad penalties and minimum balance requirements, do not always suit lower-income workers. As a result, Steve has focused Green Dot on providing underserved consumers with financial empowerment through an array of products, spanning its Green Dot Prepaid MasterCard and Visa branded debit cards, and Green Dot credit cards, as well as its Green Dot MoneyPak(r) product, which allows consumers to move cash easily and efficiently.
Steve's contribution to the industry has been recognized innumerable times over the years including winning the 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Greater Los Angeles in the Financial Services category, recognizing outstanding entrepreneurs who are building and leading dynamic and growing businesses.
At the time of his entrepreneurial venture into the financial services world, Steve was a retired radio broadcasting company executive. His career had culminated as vice president of programming at AMFM Radio -- acquired in 1999 by Clear Channel. Steve is a University of Florida alumnus.
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