Secured Card Without Bank Account

[Anonymous]

Hello All!
A close friend of mine has asked me to help her get her credit back in line after a crappy divorce that really messed up her credit. The majority of the bad remarks are only 3 years old, so it's going to take a while. She screwed up her bank account so she's using pre-paid cards for direct deposit and her expenses. Are there any secured cards out there that don't require a bank account? Or a second chance digital bank maybe? I would love to help her get back on her feet and start establishing her creditworthiness again.
Thank you!

[silver_idle]

A prepaid card is usually a "Second chance" bank account for those who cannot get a regular checking account, so technically she has one. The prepaid cards have a account and routing number that is used for depositing and debiting the account via ACH (unless the prepaid card for whatever reason dont allow ach debit, which is rare). So she is more than welcome to apply for a secure card without a regular bank account.

In the event she do want to try to move away from a prepaid card (assuming its the type of prepaid card im thinking about that charges a monthly fee), she can try Simple or Fidelity. They dont charge any fees and from my experience with them they dont check credit. 

I would also recommend that she pulls chexsystems and see what damage is done there too because while being on the road of rebuilding, you do want to take care of anything there (even if its just settling). 

[shadanat]

Open Sky secured card does not require you have a checking account. There is an annual fee of $35 but it reports to all 3 bureaus. 

Credit cards and bank accounts are two separate buckets so she should see what information is on her ChexSystems report and try to deal with that.

[beutiful5678]

She should look at ChexSystems and Early Warning Systems.

If she has access to USAA, they would be good to use as I'm sure I got my USAA checking account with a bad record from Wells Fargo and a local credit union.

If she doesn't have access to USAA she should try a local credit union as they gave me a checking account after I got a bad marks from Wells Fargo.

Obviously, I was a mess.

[Anonymous]

In actually think most prepaid cards don’t allow debuts via ach only credits. I know AMEX serve does not allow ach debits .

Ach Debits are what can cause an account to overdraft and these banks don’t want that risk.