FinTech News

Galileo Officially Launches Galileo Instant for Debit Card Creation

One major trend seen in the FinTech industry in recent years has been the roll-out of branded debit cards. Now, Galileo is looking to make creating such offerings even easier. Recently, the company announced the official launch of Galileo Instant after originally debuting a beta of the program in November of last year.

According to Galileo, Instant will allow businesses to launch their own debit cards in as little as 14 days. As far as implementations go, the company suggests such debit card programs could be used to quickly pay gig economy workers or for startups and FinTechs to roll out their own banking products. Currently there is a $1,000 one-time product creation fee as well as a $5 per cardholder account fee. Moreover Galileo notes that there is no monthly minimum that companies will need to maintain. Businesses will also have access to the Instant Dashboard where they can manage all aspects of their program and the Instant API.

Speaking to the impact that the newly-launched program could have, Galileo Instant Managing Director Cole Wilkes said in a statement, “In time and dollars, the barriers to entry in digital payments have been prohibitively high, even as the need for solutions has grown. Fast-growing companies—like streaming and gig platforms, for example—need to pay their content creators and gig workers quickly and easily, but there hasn’t been an easy way to do that.” He continued, “With Instant, we’ve created a solution that enables businesses to easily create branded debit cards and accounts for these individuals and pay them instantly, ending the cost of cutting checks or making ACH payments.” 

Additionally, elaborating on the set-up times associated with creating a new debit card product, Wilkes said, “In a live demo, we went from idea to issued card to completed transaction in less than an hour. Like all banking services, of course, Instant is backed by a regulated financial institution and requires compliance and validation steps, but we’re still estimating that most businesses can launch their programs as early as 14 days, and we plan to shave that down over time.”

The official roll out of Instant continues an impressive year for Galileo. Not only did the company announce its expansion into Mexico thanks to a partnership with Klar but is also set to be acquired by fellow FinTech SoFi. That deal is valued at $1.2 billion and is comprised of both cash and stock.

Based on the what company has announced, Galileo Instant could certainly have numerous deployments across several verticals. While technology-based brands in the fields of content creation and FinTech as well as gig economy companies are the most obvious targets, surely there are many other businesses that would enjoy their own branded product that they could offer to employees or customers. Therefore it may only be a matter of time before Galileo’s Instant program really hits it big.

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