Looking to make inroads with people who have long eschewed traditional banking services, Regions Bank has brought to market a line of alternative financial products.

The package of Now Banking offerings comprises check-cashing services, Western Union money transfers and a reloadable Visa prepaid card. All aim to bring to Regions a segment of the so-called unbanked or underbanked, people who have historically turned to payday lenders and other consumer finance companies for their money management. (That market, too, is changing: Locally based Advance Financial recently raised $6 million to add to its branch network and continue to take its services upmarket a bit.)

"A lot of our research showed that there is a group of people who have a different way of handling their finances, who live on a cash basis," said Jim Schmitz, Regions' area executive for Middle Tennessee. "So we asked ourselves, 'Is there a way we can work with them through our branches?' This is a way for us to leverage an asset that's already out there."

Schmitz said Regions' Middle Tennessee branches, which went live with the Now Banking offerings late last month, are seeing solid activity — "maybe even a little better than elsewhere because of our large market share here." On top of that, the demographic makeup of consumers seeking out Now Banking products has been of a higher quality that might be expected. Across the bank's footprint, more than half come from households making $50,000 or more, further evidence that America's middle class is increasingly managing its budget far more carefully than a few years ago.

More than 1,500 branches of Regions' offices in 16 states are now online. In the two months through the end of November, John Owen, Regions' head of consumer banking division, said about 10,000 people had used the services — half of them cashing checks, 30 percent using Western Union services and 20 percent signing up for reloadable cards. A plus for the bank: It hasn't yet done any formal marketing, meaning a lot of the traffic it has seen so far has come from word of mouth.

"When you can offer a product someone needs and do so at a cheaper price, the word gets out," Owen said.

While those customers are generating a nice stream of fee income for Regions, the bigger payoffs will come down the road. Owen said about 10 percent of the Now Banking clients already have signed up for other bank products. If the bank can keep those people and upsell them to other offerings, it would essentially create a new group of very 'sticky' customers.