Barclaycard and Becta team to develop pre-paid cards for Home Access grants

Barclaycard set collaboration with UK government IT agency Becta to in a move to develop a special pre-paid card delivering grants to families qualifying for a free computer and Internet connection under the terms of Home Access programme.

The national deployment of the programme follows a successful test in late 2009 in which 12,500 families from two Local Authority areas qualified for Internet access provision grants.

Under Home Access programme , Barclaycard was contracted to supply the payment mechanism to securely transfer the financial award and worked alongside Becta to develop a payment card that combines a financial grant threshold, single use transaction safeguards, and preferred merchant restrictions