“Prepaid” on Customers’ Minds
Exploring Non-Card Payment Trends
At the AVPS blog, our commitment is to keep you at the forefront of the ‘Prepaid Cards Trend,’ where technology merges with finance, impacting you and your clientele. We have recently highlighted various ‘non-card’ payment methods, including electronic checks and telephone verification, showcasing the breadth of options available to your customers.
The Booming Business of Prepaid Cards
Certainly, consumers also possess cards that don’t function as “credit” cards. Indeed, not only do they have debit cards linked to their accounts, but also prepaid cards charged with specific funds. Currently, this sector is experiencing a significant surge.
Recently, the Green Sheet had an article on “the race to prepaid,” noting that “ Physical POS networks once connected over phone lines were replaced by networks that linked to the Internet, … and now to mobile devices in a vast array of configurations. (In turn) they connect to prepaid card accounts, or various kinds of stored-value or transaction accounts.”
Prepaid Cards and Digital Wallets
The observation connects the prepaid trend to the “digital wallet” trend — and we’ll have more on the latter in an upcoming post. The article also notes that “banks that historically shunned low-income individuals are now entering prepaid to capture that growing consumer segment. Younger generations of consumers…are rapidly adopting prepaid as their primary financial tools, with little interest in traditional banking.”
AVPS’s New Prepaid VISA Program
So even customers with non-traditional accounts — or non-traditional wallets — will be using electronic transactions to pay, and more and more of those will be with prepaid cards.
Happily, AVPS is pleased to announce a new prepaid VISA program for merchants, allowing them to offer these cards to their customers. Highlights include:
*Available for purchase at a nominal fee of just $1.00 above their value.
*Available in 25.00/50.00/100.00 increments.
*Cards are good for one year with no fees to the end user.
*Free online and phone balance check with transaction history (for both you and your customers’ convenience)
*Valid for transactions at all venues that accept Visa.
The Elite Choice Prepaid Card
Furthermore, our “Elite Choice” prepaid card complements this range, catering exclusively to 40 select merchants. This elite group includes names like CVS, Macy’s, Winn-Dixie markets, and Marriott Courtyard hotels. These cards offer an extended validity of up to five years.
Inquiries for both — as the trend in your customers’ use of such cards continues to boom– are both welcome, and encouraged.
