It was (is) real. It was selling a City branded pre-paid Mastercard. You can get the same from FairFX, Caxton, the Post Office etc without the branding.
Sounds like someone Massively ( see what I did there?) over-estimated the potential. A bit like the City Circle that was originally supposed to stretch all the way around the stadium.......
Now if they were selling Football club branded Cards for a large number of Clubs then it might have had legs, but if it's City only then you only need to look at the Ticket Prices thread to work out that it was never going to make money from City fans.