The Kardashian Kard
Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian launched a prepaid debit card in November 2010 that charged $1.50 to call customer service, $1 to check your balance at an ATM, and $6 to cancel. Connecticut's Attorney General called it out on Black Friday, and the Kardashians pulled out within 72 hours.
In November 2010, Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian launched a prepaid MasterCard debit card aimed at their young fanbase, with fees so aggressive that a teenager using it for a $200-a-month allowance would lose roughly 6.7% of her money to charges before she spent a dollar on anything she actually wanted. The card lasted less than a month. Only 250 people ever bought one.
The Kardashian Kard wasn’t a business the sisters built. It was a licensing deal: Revenue Resource Group, a Fresno-based financial services company, created the product and paid the Kardashians a flat fee plus a percentage of revenue from every customer who signed up. The sisters’ job was to put their name and face on it, which they did at a paparazzi-mobbed launch party in early November. “We are excited,” they said in a press release. “Now our fans will be able to take us with them everywhere.”
What their fans would actually be taking with them was a card that charged money for nearly everything, including doing nothing at all.
At a glance:
| Launched | Early November 2010 |
| Withdrawn | November 29, 2010 |
| Created by | Revenue Resource Group (Fresno, CA) |
| Issuing bank | University National Bank (St. Paul, MN) |
| Cards sold | 250 |
| Lawsuit | RRG sued the Kardashians for $75 million, lost |
| Why it closed | Connecticut AG investigation, predatory fees made public |
The Fees
This is the part that made the Attorney General’s office get involved on Black Friday.
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| 12-month card purchase | $99.95 |
| 6-month card purchase | $59.95 |
| Monthly maintenance fee | $7.95 |
| Loading money onto the card | $1.00 per load |
| ATM cash withdrawal | $1.50 (plus ATM operator fee) |
| ATM balance inquiry | $1.00 |
| Declined transaction (ATM or point of sale) | $1.00 |
| Automatic bill payment | $2.00 per transaction |
| Talking to a live customer service representative | $1.50 per call |
| Replacement card | $9.95 |
| Card cancellation | $6.00 |
Slate ran the numbers on what a typical user would actually pay: a teenager putting $200 a month onto a six-month card, checking her balance once a month at an ATM, withdrawing cash a couple of times, and calling customer service once for a replacement would pay $80.40 in fees on $1,200 in spending. A checking account with a regular debit card would cost somewhere between nothing and $36 for the same period.
The cancellation fee was especially bold. If you realized the fees were eating your money and wanted out, that cost $6 too.
The Story
Why this product existed at all
The Kardashian Kard launched into a market that was specifically designed to extract money from people who couldn’t get traditional bank accounts, and by 2010 the prepaid debit card industry was growing fast because three pieces of regulation had just reshaped the financial landscape.
First, the Credit CARD Act of 2010 made it illegal for banks to sign up anyone under 21 for a credit card without a cosigner or proof of income, which killed the campus-booth model that had been feeding the industry young customers for decades. Second, new rules that took effect in July 2010 stopped banks from letting customers overdraw their accounts and charging $35 per overdraft without permission, and only 22% of customers opted back in, which cost the banking industry an estimated $30 billion a year in lost fee revenue. Third, prepaid cards were specifically exempt from all of it, meaning there were no federal limits on the fees issuers could charge.
The Mercator Advisory Group estimated that customers would load $672 billion onto prepaid cards by 2013, up from $330 billion in 2009, and the financial industry saw prepaid as the replacement revenue stream for everything regulation had just taken away from them. As Gail Hillebrand of Consumers Union put it: “There are a lot of under-35-year-olds who have never had a credit card. Prepaid debit cards are a way for the financial industry to tap into the young consumer market.”
The Kardashians, whose audience skewed young, female, and aspirational, were a perfect vehicle for exactly this pitch.
The launch
Revenue Resource Group handled the product itself, which was built on their existing “Mobile Resource Card” platform, while University National Bank, a community bank in St. Paul, Minnesota, served as the card issuer under an agreement with MasterCard. The Kardashians’ company, Dash Dolls, had a licensing agreement with RRG granting use of the sisters’ names, photographs, likenesses, and endorsements.
The card launched with a red-carpet party in early November 2010, and the initial press coverage treated it as another Kardashian brand extension, somewhere between their clothing line at Sears and their fragrance deals. Nobody in the entertainment press looked at the fee schedule. That would take a state Attorney General.
Black Friday
On November 26, 2010, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who had just been elected to the U.S. Senate, issued a public consumer warning about the Kardashian Kard and sent a formal letter to University National Bank demanding details on the card’s fee structure, marketing practices, and whether the product violated Connecticut’s gift card law.
His core argument was that prepaid debit cards function like gift cards under Connecticut law, and the state’s gift card statute was specifically designed to protect consumers from “pernicious and predatory fees that can unconscionably drain value.” The fees on the Kardashian Kard, he argued, did exactly that.
Blumenthal didn’t mince words. “Lose it before you use it ought to be this card’s motto,” he told reporters. “Keeping up with the Kardashians is impossible using these cards, laden with pernicious and predatory fees that swallow card value.” He went further, calling the card “a dangerous financial fantasy” that “specifically targets young adults in evoking the name and image of the Kardashian family who showcase lives of luxury and extravagance.”
The irony, he noted, was the point: “The Kardashian Kard will distance consumers from the financial abundance key to the Kardashians’ lifestyle. Consumers lose money before they can use it with this card.”
72 hours later
On November 29, three days after Blumenthal’s Black Friday warning, the Kardashians’ legal counsel sent a termination letter to Revenue Resource Group and University National Bank, citing the Attorney General’s investigation and ending the licensing agreement “in its entirety, effective immediately.”
Their lawyer, Dennis Roach, issued a statement that framed the exit entirely as a PR problem: “The Kardashians have worked extremely long and hard to create a positive public persona that appeals to everyone, particularly young adults. Unfortunately, the negative spotlight turned on the Kardashians as a result of the Attorney General’s comments and actions threatens everything for which they have worked.”
That framing is worth reading twice. The statement doesn’t say the fees were wrong. It doesn’t say the product was harmful. It says the spotlight was the threat. The Kardashians positioned themselves as casualties of bad press rather than participants in a predatory product.
Kourtney Kardashian’s only public comment, given to ABC News on November 30: “We are not working with the bank anymore and that’s all we’re allowed to say.”
University National Bank announced it was terminating all card sales and refunding all 250 customers their balances and fees.
The Lawsuit
In January 2011, Revenue Resource Group sued the Kardashians, Kris Jenner, and Dash Dolls in Fresno state court for $75 million, alleging breach of contract and claiming that the sisters’ abrupt exit had destroyed not just the Kardashian Kard but RRG’s ability to sign other celebrity clients for similar products.
The Kardashians filed an anti-SLAPP motion under California law, which protects free speech from retaliatory lawsuits, and in June 2011, Judge Jeffrey Hamilton granted it and dismissed the case. His reasoning cut to the core of what actually killed the product.
“Plaintiff alleges that it was the publicity that killed off its business and ran off other potential celebrity clients,” the judge wrote. “But it was not merely the Kardashian termination letter that did it. It was the onslaught of negative coverage before and after their statement about the fees and charges associated with the card. In other words, the product’s features themselves caused the problem once they became clearer to the public.”
The court awarded the Kardashians $6,825 in attorney fees. RRG, which had been planning to replicate the celebrity-branded card model with other endorsers, appears to have shut down after the loss.
What Went Wrong
The product couldn’t survive transparency
The Kardashian Kard’s fee structure only worked if nobody looked at it closely, which is by design in prepaid debit. The industry at the time relied on consumers not comparing fee schedules to traditional banking products, and the Kardashian name brought the one thing the model can’t survive: public scrutiny. An obscure prepaid card with the same fee schedule would have continued operating unnoticed, because nobody in the Attorney General’s office issues a Black Friday press release about a card no one’s heard of.
The celebrity endorsement cut both ways
The Kardashians gave Revenue Resource Group exactly what the licensing deal promised: instant awareness, press coverage, and access to a young audience that the prepaid industry was specifically trying to reach. The problem was that the same fame that drove attention to the product also drove attention to the fees, and once a state AG started quoting the fee schedule on cable news, the celebrity association made the story bigger, not smaller. A consumer advocate quoted by Consumer Reports summed it up: “There’s nothing glamorous about a prepaid card that comes with a bunch of hidden fees and other gotchas.”
The Kardashians didn’t build anything
This wasn’t a company the sisters operated, managed, or had any hand in designing. It was a licensing deal where they rented their name and image to a financial product they apparently never examined closely enough to anticipate the backlash. Their exit statement makes this clear: they didn’t defend the product, explain the fees, or propose changes. They said the press was bad and left.
That’s the structural difference between a celebrity brand and a celebrity licensing deal. A brand is something you build, operate, and stand behind. A licensing deal is your face on someone else’s product for a check, and when it goes wrong, there’s nothing to defend because you never built anything worth defending.
What You Can Learn
Read the fee schedule before you put your name on it. The Kardashians’ lawyer didn’t say the fees were acceptable, that the product served consumers well, or that the AG was wrong. He said the bad press was threatening their brand. Which means either they didn’t review the fee structure before signing the deal, or they reviewed it and didn’t anticipate that charging $1.50 to talk to a human on the phone would end up on the news. Both options are the same lesson: if your name is on it, you own whatever it does, and “I didn’t know” is not a defense your audience will accept.
Celebrity attention amplifies the product in every direction. The Kardashians drove massive awareness to the card, and that same awareness is exactly what brought the AG’s investigation, the consumer advocacy pressure, and the media coverage that killed it in under a month. If your product can survive scrutiny, celebrity attention is an accelerant. If it can’t, celebrity attention is gasoline on a fire.
Licensing deals transfer your reputation, not just your name. The Kardashians didn’t design the fee structure, didn’t issue the cards, didn’t set the terms, and had no operational role in the product. None of that mattered to the public, because the card had their name on it and their faces in the marketing, which means the $1 charge for a declined transaction was, in the public’s mind, the Kardashians charging their own fans a dollar for having insufficient funds. A licensing deal is a bet that the product will make you look good, and if you’re wrong, you absorb the damage even though you didn’t build the thing.
The prepaid debit industry was the real problem, and the Kardashians were just the most visible part of it. Gail Hillebrand of Consumers Union said it clearly after the Kardashians pulled out: “Other prepaid card rip-offs are rampant in the marketplace and consumers remain vulnerable to high fees and weak protections.” The Kardashian Kard’s fees were roughly in line with what many prepaid cards charged at the time, and the only difference was that nobody writes a press release about a card that doesn’t have a famous name on it. The card died because it became visible, not because it was uniquely bad.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the Kardashian Kard?
A prepaid MasterCard debit card launched in November 2010 by Revenue Resource Group under a licensing agreement with Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian. It was marketed to their young fanbase and came with fees that included $99.95 for a 12-month card, $7.95 monthly maintenance, $1.50 to call customer service, and $6 to cancel.
How long did the Kardashian Kard last?
Less than one month. It launched in early November 2010 and was terminated on November 29, 2010, after the Connecticut Attorney General issued a public warning about its fees on Black Friday.
How many Kardashian Kards were sold?
Only 250 cards were sold before the product was pulled. University National Bank refunded all 250 customers their balances and fees.
Did the Kardashians get sued over the card?
Revenue Resource Group sued them for $75 million in January 2011, claiming the sisters’ exit destroyed their business and scared off other potential celebrity clients. The case was dismissed in June 2011 under California’s anti-SLAPP law, with the judge ruling that “the product’s features themselves caused the problem once they became clearer to the public.” The Kardashians were awarded $6,825 in attorney fees.
How much were the Kardashians paid for the endorsement?
The exact amount was never disclosed, though the deal was structured as a flat fee plus a percentage of revenue from customers who signed up. Given that only 250 cards were sold, the revenue share would have been negligible.
Sources
- Connecticut AG, “Attorney General Issues Black Friday Warning on Perils of Kardashian Kards,” November 26, 2010. Full text of Blumenthal’s warning, fee schedule, consumer protection argument, gift card law analysis.
- Connecticut AG, “Attorney General Pleased Kardashians Seek to Sever Ties,” November 29, 2010. Termination announcement, follow-up statement on remaining consumer concerns.
- ABC News, “Kardashian Card Goes Kaput,” November 30, 2010. Kourtney Kardashian quote, University National Bank refund announcement, 250 cards sold.
- Slate, “The Kardashians Try to Cash In,” November 2010. Fee breakdown and cost analysis for typical teenage user, prepaid debit market context, Credit CARD Act impact, Mercator Advisory Group market projections.
- Hollywood Reporter, “Kardashians Win Lawsuit Accusing Them of Ruining Prepaid Card Company,” June 13, 2011. Full lawsuit details, anti-SLAPP ruling, Judge Hamilton quotes, deal structure, $75 million claim.
- Consumer Reports / Consumers Union, “Kardashian Kard: Weak Protections and Fees”. Suzanne Martindale and Gail Hillebrand quotes, broader prepaid industry concerns, consumer protection gaps.
- CBS News, “Kardashian Sisters Want Out of Debit Card Deal”. Dennis Roach statement, termination letter details.
- MinnPost, “Going Hollywood with the Kardashian Kard Lands St. Paul Community Bank in Unwanted Spotlight”. University National Bank context, community bank fallout.