Charity Provides Immigrants With Debit Cards

A nonprofit center in New Jersey started a program recently that provides low-fee debit cards to immigrant workers who are wary of banks but in need of a place to store their money, reports The New York Times.

The debit card is affiliated with MasterCard, which means it can be used wherever that card is accepted.

The nonprofit group New Labor, in New Brunswick, hopes the cards will become available to the thousands of immigrants at 140 work centers around the country. Fees for the Sigo card, whose name combines the word for “yes” in Spanish with the English “go,” include an initial $4.50 fee and a monthly $2.50 fee. The proceeds are split among the work centers that offer them and the companies that administer them.

Grants from the Ford Foundation and the Center for Financial Services Innovation supported research that led to the development of the cards, the Times reports.

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