Prime Cash lets fintech customers turn physical cash into a digital balance. Treasury Prime has launched the product, powering it through Green Dot’s embedded finance platform, Arc, and the Green Dot Network. Customers can add cash at more than 90,000 retail locations across the United States, including Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS. They skip the branch entirely.
Here is how Prime Cash works. A customer opens a fintech app and generates a unique, time-sensitive barcode in seconds. They present it at a participating retailer and hand over their cash. The money lands directly in their account, usually within minutes. Behind the scenes, Treasury Prime handles the network rules and compliance workflows through a single API.
Prime Cash Turns Retail Stores Into Cash On-Ramps
Treasury Prime sits between banks and fintech companies. Its embedded banking software lets fintechs build financial products without becoming a bank. Most of those products assume digital-first customers. Yet gig workers, small business owners, and households in underbanked communities still rely heavily on cash. Prime Cash closes that gap. It hands those fintechs a retail cash network without the cost of building one from scratch.
Green Dot brings the physical reach. Its network spans more than 90,000 stores nationwide, and 96% of Americans live within three miles of one. For 25 years, the company has widened access to banking and payment tools. Through Arc, fintechs on Treasury Prime can now tap that footprint directly, rather than stitching together armored-transport contracts or one-off retailer deals.
Why Cash Still Matters for Fintech Growth
Cash remains central to daily life for millions of Americans. Among households earning under $25,000 a year, it makes up nearly 28% of transactions. Adults aged 55 and older use it at twice the rate of younger people. In the past 30 days, 83% of US adults reached for cash at least once, and more than nine in ten say they plan to keep using it.
Those numbers expose a blind spot. Most fintech products fund accounts only through digital rails. That leaves cash-reliant customers stranded, and it caps growth for the fintechs serving them. Chris Dean, CEO of Treasury Prime, framed the stakes plainly. Financial access, he said, “shouldn’t depend on whether a customer uses cash or digital rails.” Green Dot’s Renata Caine added that the launch widens who gets to take part in modern financial services, not simply how people transact.
For Treasury Prime, the product also works as a competitive marker. As infrastructure providers race to help partners reach more users, a turnkey cash on-ramp sets the platform apart. The demand is real, the retail rails already exist, and Prime Cash now connects the two.
