prepaid card

Visa Inc announced its plans to introduce new fee scheme for US merchants. In a conference call with analysts Visa Chief Executive Joseph Saunders said the company would introduce a network participation fee in the United States for all of its debit, credit and prepaid card services.

Among other things in the new policy Visa will lower the variable rate charged for transactions.

The move comes in the wake of new fee structure that will take effect later this year under 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Ukash, the Global eMoney network, has announced the launch of the UkashOut MasterCard®, which enables consumers to convert their electronic money back to cash safely and securely.
With UkashOut MasterCard®, consumers can “close the loop” on eMoney payments by loading their cash onto a UkashOut MasterCard® using their Ukash vouchers.

American Express announced the launch of a new reloadable prepaid card with no activation or maintenance fees.

Customers pay no fees for purchasing the Card online, monthly maintenance, activation, balance inquiries, alerts, Card replacement, foreign currency conversion or loading via bank account.

Besides, the funds on the Card do not expire, and if lost or stolen, the funds can be replaced. The first monthly ATM cash withdrawal is free, after which a $2.00 fee applies (bank network charges may also apply).

A largest communications and technology company in Turkey, Turkcell announced its partnership with Garanti Bank to conjointly launch a new co-branded prepaid card Cep-T ParaCard.

A specialist in sales and marketing of prepaid products inComm announced its partnership with Unik, a company specialized in the administration and processing of innovative ways of payment, to offer segments of the Brazilian retail market complete solutions to the management and promotion of prepaid card sales.

Oberthur Technologies has partnered with Hungarian largest financial institution OTB Bank for contactless payment city cards in Pécs, 5th largest city in the country.

Oberthur’s contactless citizen card represents an international banking card that can be used not only for payments but also for other transactions across 150 million merchant locations within Maestro network. The prepaid card can easily be loaded via the Internet or with cash in an OTP Bank branch.

Prepaid card provider VoiceCash has introduced a new product to the German market: the new VoiceCash Prepaid MasterCard card.

Apart from conventional functionality of a MasterCard card the new VoiceCash Prepaid Card features a number of advantages over the standard product.

The application process for the VoiceCash Prepaid MasterCard is administered electronically via internet at www.die-karte-fuer-alle.de. Thanks to the prepaid principle, neither credit information (SCHUFA) nor an account are necessary.

Visa is implementing a new money transfer service to allow customers send funds in real-time to other cards using the VisaNet network. For the first time the service was activated by Russia's largest payment kiosk operator, 1st Processing Bank (QIWI Group), and Ukraine's largest bank, PrivatBank earlier this week. Now Visa plans international roll-out.

Using the service customers just specify their Visa card number to initiate the payment. It eliminates any need to fill out different forms and give away routing information such as bank codes and branch addresses.

The global payments provider Western Union Company has partnered with InComm, a marketer, distributor and technology innovator of stored-value gift and prepaid cards, to offer Western Union General Purpose Reloadable prepaid cards (GPR). The Western Union® MoneyWise™ Prepaid Card will first be offered in the U.S. through InComm retail locations.

The Western Union MoneyWise Prepaid Card complements the Western Union GoCashSM service, an in-lane money-transfer service offered through InComm retail locations in the U.S. since December 2009.

Visa Inc has entered into an agreement with InsurCard, a wholly owned subsidiary of Service Network Design, LLC (SND) to become a preferred brand for the delivery of payment for insurance claims. InsurCard provides the insurance industry with card-based solutions for the payment of claims, expanding the penetration of electronic payments in an industry traditionally reliant on check payments.

First Data released the first analysis titled First Data SpendTrend for closed loop prepaid cards for the full month of December 2010 compared to December 2009.

The report reveals that on a year-over-year basis dollar volume growth of activations was 2% in December, a decrease from November’s growth of 8.6%. Overall redemption dollar volume growth was 4.6% in December, compared to 5.9% in November.

VoiceCash in alliance with blau Mobilfunk has introduced the first prepaid card for electronic payment transactions in Germany - the blauworld PREPAID MasterCard - which also can be used to assign money worldwide. In a cooperation with Lekkerland Deutschland the blauworld PREPAID MasterCard will be available at more than 6,000 points of sale, kiosks and fuel stations nationwide.

MasterCard has purchased the prepaid Card Program Management (CPM) operations of Travelex for US$458 million in cash, with an earn-out of up to an additional US$55 million if certain performance targets are met.

The largest non-bank foreign exchange currency provider Travelex announced this week the launch of the first in the US prepaid foreign “currency cards” available in Euros and British Pounds that utilizes chip & PIN technology.

Ixaris has launched a new product called Ixaris Opn (should be pronounced as open). The new service is an application development platform to allow developers to add payment applications for financial institutions and specialized market segments.

There is no sophisticated integration platform with Ixaris Opn which can be easily brought to market. Developers can use the platform for creating customized payment apps that can incorporate mainstream payment networks such as Visa or MasterCard prepaid cards, and bank transfers via SWIFT.