It was a pleasure to be back in Dubai again to host Visa’s fifth annual prepaid Middle East conference and Awards
The Middle East and Africa continues to enjoy rapid prepaid growth with the UAE, South Africa and Saudi Arabia continuing to lead the way.
The drivers remain government support for electronic payroll as well as the dramatic rise in the use of internet and mobile devices.
Prepaid cards make up an important segment of electronic payments and according to figures released by Visa and Moody’s, electronic payments in the four year period up to 2015 in the UAE enhanced the GDP by $3.7bn.This stands at $3.4bn in Saudi Arabia and $3.1bn in South Africa.
There has been talk for years of prepaid coming of age in the region. There is now demonstrable evidence of effective partnerships between governments, financial institutions, merchants and technology companies to drive financial inclusion, accelerate electronic acceptance and promote commercial growth.
My congratulations to all of the award winners. In the early days of prepaid, there was a perception that many issuers were charging consumers unexpectedly fees and charges consumers did not expect such as to activate the card or load money onto it.
Issuers have greatly upped their game in terms of transparency about fees; competition in the sector has also played its part.

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By GlobalDataBut as my sidekick at many a conference David Parker (founder of Polymath) has argued eloquently (and loudly), the industry does need to remain on guard not to run the risk of misleading consumers.
Many prepaid products are dressed up to the public as if they are traditional current accounts or say they offer debit cards.
In the UK for example, debit cards that work with current accounts are protected by the FCA up to £75,000 of deposited funds.
These products are issued as e-money issuers, not banks and thus cannot have funds protected by domestic deposit protection schemes or claim to be a current account rather they are just a payment account. And while funds are protected by being held in separated accounts they are not protected by the FCA in the same way.
Parker has a point in suggesting that some consumers may, potentially be at risk of being misled.
Clydesdale rolls out its own challenger brand
Another week, another new UK challenger brand: this time from Glasgow-headquartered Clydesdale Yorkshire Bank.
B from Clydesdale, claims to offer the fastest account-opening service available in the UK and comes complete with MasterCard-branded debit card.
The app is free for the first 12 months and is then to be charged at £2 a month.
It is early days but I have yet to find anyone who has opened an account with B; the plan to charge £2 a month for a mobile banking app is ambitious, if not wildly optimistic.
I hope I am proved wrong, having long had a soft spot for Clydesdale, going back to its days as a sister brand of the old Midland. At first glance though, I suspect that digital start-ups Tandem, Atom and Mondo are not losing too much sleep over ‘B’.