Meta Financial Group in Sioux Falls, S.D., parent of MetaBank and Meta Payment Systems, is raising capital to fuel a future acquisition, and has renewed a significant prepaid card issuing relationship with NetSpend.
Meta Financial, which holds $2.3 billion in assets between itself and subsidiaries like Meta Payments, has sold $23 million worth of common stock in two private offerings to institutional investors on June 25 and June 29. Closings on the private placements will depend on the successful closure of the anticipated acquisition.
Separately, its Meta Payments Systems unit has extended a ten-year relationship with NetSpend, an Austin, Texas-based prepaid card marketer owned by the payment processor Total System Services Inc. of Columbus, Ga. The extension renews the partnership for five years.
Meta Payment Systems provides ATM, prepaid card, credit, and electronic fund transfer services.
"Financial inclusion and empowerment for everyone is central to everything we do in our business," MetaBank president Bara Hanson said in a June 30 news release. "NetSpend's core values have made our partnership a perfect fit that we hope to continue for years to come."
The bank's earlier efforts to raise capital in recent years went to improving its compliance-related infrastructure in the following a consent order issued by the Office of Thrift Supervision in 2011 to address a credit product, iAdvance, which was likened to a payday loan program.
