Austin (Texas) Business Journal: NetSpend Corp. last month filed a lawsuit against MPower Labs Inc., alleging the competitor took confidential information, trade secrets and employees. But the Austin-based companies were founded by the same men — and they each have major stakes in both companies. Brothers Rogelio "Roy" and Bertrand Sosa, who immigrated from Mexico in the 1980s, founded NetSpend, which sells prepaid debit cards, during the dot-com boom with $750. By 2006, the company had about $100 million in revenue and $5 billion in transactions through its cards. And it was about that time they began a new venture called MPower Labs. But on Aug. 4, the Sosas and MPower were named as defendants by NetSpend in a lawsuit, alleging Rogelio Sosa began MPower while still a member of NetSpend's board of directors and began actively recruiting key NetSpend employees. MPower, like NetSpend, plans to sell debit cards that aren't connected to bank accounts and cater to the country's unbanked, which accounts for millions of Americans who don't have traditional credit.
