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It’s a relatively new invention. Basically think of it like a gift card that’s good almost everywhere. Except they have transaction fees, so every time you use it it loses value over and above the cost of your purchase. The fastfood places love to use them instead of paychecks, they issue you a card and transfer money to it on payday, so it works kind of like direct deposit, much cheaper for them.

But those fees, basically the world treats like you’re using an ATM that’s out of your banks network, I’ve seen them as high as $5. And that’s what kills you. Say you’re doing really well in fastfood terms and your paycheck (on the card) was $500. So you go put $40 of gas in the car, but the fee means it cost you $45 to get $40 worth of gas. $50 worth of groceries costs $55. Everything costs that extra $5, you could easily eat up a fifth of your paycheck on transaction fees. The only “safe” thing to do with them is put it in the bank, which you don’t have, or cash it out which usually costs extra. From the business’ perspective they make good sense, get rid of all that check overhead and hassle. But they just beat on the employee.