“Honestly excited to see investigations beginning they will expose our operation as squeaky clean,” Simmons writes on Twitter
Russell Simmons said this weekend that technical issues plaguing his pre-paid debit cards – called RushCard – have been resolved. But the news didn’t come soon enough to stop a federal investigation and class action lawsuit. The hip-hop mogul and co-owner of the RushCard reassured his users that they would have access to their money. “Card to card transfers are working,” Simmons tweeted Sunday morning. Thousands had been prevented from accessing their money and raised their concerns on social media.
Founded by Simmons in 2003, the RushCard is a pre-paid Visa Debit Card mostly used by “poor and working class Americans who cannot or choose not to establish traditional banking accounts,” according to a class action lawsuit filed Friday against Simmons’ UniRush Financial, Rush Communications, Meta Financial Group and MetaBank in US District Court in New York.
The RushCard allows users to have their paychecks or government checks directly deposited onto the cards or they can load money on the cards themselves and use them to make payments, buy groceries and withdraw cash from ATMs. But earlier this month, the cards stopped working for some users who flooded social media with complaints. The affected cardholders said they were blocked from using their accounts. Others complained that their accounts had been deactivated or that money was missing and they couldn’t pay bills, buy food or put gas in their cars. –
