Banks are failing to innovate and are falling
behind in the race to seize the prepaid cards market, according to
MasterCard global prepaid solutions group executive Ron Hynes.
Hynes, addressing the MasterCard Europe
conference in Barcelona, said:
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“Prepaid has been led by innovators and the
true innovators in prepaid have been non-financial services
organisations.”
He hailed the innovations achieved by
organisations in the telecommunications sector and warned that they
pose a threat to the status of banks.
In particular, he picked out the African telco
Airtel as a great example of prepaid card success.
Airtel had launched an virtual prepaid
card in Kenya in February.
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By GlobalDataHynes warned that the traditional financial
services model needs to change in order to take advantage of the
prepaid market, which some forecasters have said will exceed $100bn
before the end of the decade.
“It is not enough to facilitate the business
model that we have had for the past 45 years,” he said.
At the conference, MasterCard announced a new
digital product aimed at helping its customers bring prepaid to
market quicker.
The Prepaid Europe Resource Centre is intended
to supersede the existing MasterCard online support system which
customers had criticised for becoming increasingly frustrating to
use.
The centre can be accessed at http://marketingresourcecentre.mastercard.com/prepaid
