GDOT
#Well, no, you level out.
To you're point, <UNK>, we fully believe that there is ---+ and that's why we killed the product.
That there's some level of nonsense and mischief in the portfolio, and by the way, that would be, as you know, not just with Green Dot.
Every bank has fraud.
Every bank, I don't care who you or what you are.
Every prepaid company has it.
I think what maybe is a little bit different about Green Dot is because we are the only bank in the industry, directly regulated by the Federal Reserve and because as an individual I have a somewhat conservative view on these issues, regulatory issues, governance issue, so we tend to run on the more conservative side.
As we've always been, as you know, by following the Company, a very strict on fraud controls.
Way back before anyone talked about tax fraud and anything else, we were on these earnings calls, as far back as 2012, talking about new risk controls and new methods of out-of-wallet identity verification.
There were a lot of questions.
Why is Green Dot doing that.
Nobody else is doing that.
Well, now they are.
They're going to need to.
We've always been on the cutting edge of that.
So we did believe, and do believe, that some out of our active cards and some amount of MoneyPak sales were there in ways that we don't want them to be there.
We want them out of our Company.
This is what I said in my prepared remarks.
It may be that at the end of the day, you're a somewhat smaller revenue company, but a more efficient company with higher margins, less call center utilization, customers who are more available to lend money to, as we try to get into lending and other kinds of activities, and a more healthier, sustainable, long-term company.
You may be right.
I don't think it affects your growth profile forever.
That wouldn't make sense.
In other words, you can only get rid of MoneyPak once.
Once that products gone, and it's been gone since February 1, and increasingly to last quarter, Q4 into February 1.
Once it's gone, it's gone.
What you going to see is ---+ and fraudsters, by the way, don't retain.
In other words, you don't buy ---+ remember our cards are never anonymous.
They're a fully-fledged Patriot Act compliant bank account, so to open an account, you have to go through full panoply of a customer identification tools, just like opening a checking account at a Chase or Wells Fargo, or somewhere like that.
So, it's the same controls that all of us use as regulated banks subject to the Patriot Act.
The cards are never anonymous.
The question is, when do you see all the nonsense get fully out of the system.
Our answer, the answer is, should be fairly be fairly quickly, because fraudsters don't get their cards and reload them for years.
They use them.
They get their money off.
They throw them away.
They buy a new one.
The use them.
They get the money off.
That's where it creates those one and done, or part of that one and done behavior.
We also have a lot of very honest customers doing the same thing.
I want to buy something out of Orbitz, an airline ticket.
I want to buy something on eBay.
I need a card for a day.
So the problem is that the fraudsters look just like a good guy, and so we're not sure exactly where it's going to end up.
But to your point, that's why we're so thrilled with how resilient the active card base was in Q1.
Yes, we were down 1.8%, but given that we lost MoneyPaks, 20% down in our reload division.
We could have every right to be down 15%, 20%, and we weren't.
That's telling me that, hey, we may have been selling MoneyPaks that are having trouble converting to swipe, but our active card base would seem to be what's remaining, honest, good customers who want to use a bank that doesn't rip them off.
That's what excites me, because even if it means you've got to take a haircut as a reset in revenue, it is what it is.
But, going forward, you have a real customer base and sustainability.
That, I don't know what that means.
<UNK>, can you ---+ .
Restated in what way, <UNK>.
Oh, you're talking about ---+ because we bought companies and bought portfolios, so can't ---+ in other words, we're no longer just the prepaid company.
You have to sort of include now, GoBank, which hadn't been included before.
That, now, has legitimate GDV.
We now have an ever-increasing gift card portfolio that we need to sweep in, or should sweep in to give the size of our full network.
Then, what we did for the GDV at PPG ---+ a lot of initials here.
That is large GDV.
We did not include that, because that's really not consistent with the card portfolio, so that we keeping separate as a transaction metric.
The explanation should be fairly obvious and logical to our investors.
I would assume it is to you, too.
Was there a question about one them that did not seem logical.
Yes, then what you do is you change the prior period to make sure that investors can see the apple-to-apple comparison.
That's exactly right.
I think, operator, that does it.
Unless my screen is wrong.
Is there anyone else.
Okay.
Well, thank you for your time today on the call.
I know there was a lot of data and a lot to share, but we wanted to give you a good, crisp review.
Thank you, <UNK>, you did a fabulous job today.
Tank you, everybody, for listening.
We'll see you, I'm sure, on the conference circuit, shortly.
