American Express announced Monday that it is introducing a prepaid debit card, marking what could be the start of a shift away from conventional charge cards for many consumers. Prepaid cards allow consumers to load a card with money and only spend that money. And the cards aren't attached to a bank account, so anyone can use them. In 2010, there were $65 billion worth of prepaid card transactions -- up 35% from $48 billion in 2009.

"Prepaid is an exploding part of the payments industry," said Dan Schulman, group president of American Express' Enterprise Growth Group. "It's safer than cash, you can use it for online purchases and it's a great budgetary tool, because it gives you limits since it's prepaid and you can only spend what you put on it."

American Express (AXP, Fortune 500) says its biggest competition comes from prepaid card issuers Green Dot (GDOT) and NetSpend (NTSP), which work with major credit card networks like MasterCard (MA, Fortune 500) and Visa (V, Fortune 500).

source : cnn