2103 Paybefore Awards Category 20: Breakout Prepaid Company of the Year
The organization that stood out from the crowd in 2012 to make a positive, game-changing difference in the prepaid/emerging payments environment in a geographic region or globally. May be a new or established organization.
Company Name: American Express
American Express is a global financial services company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success.
American Express facilitates the end to end consumer experience. This provides efficiencies that are generally not available in the marketplace and uniquely positions American Express to provide holistic consumer friendly products backed by award winning customer service and of course, the trusted American Express brand. Over the past year, American Express has launched multiple new products, including a debit and checking alternative, reloadable prepaid cards, global travel cards and gift cards in various markets around the globe, along with expanding our prepaid cards through a number of new retail partnerships.
Strategic Approach: Reaching new customer segments and new geographies across the world with new products and services that are backed by Amex safety, security and service. Focused on alternative payments that represent $28 trillion in spend volume and enormous opportunity of existing products and services, and platforms.
Differentiators:
- Products like Bluebird make the consumer the champion
- Expanded travel card beyond Brazil and Australia to South Africa and India
- Expanded gift card to India
- Expanded GPR to CVS, Walgreens, Office Depot, Barnes and Noble Campus Bookstores and Target
Pitch: Trust and service continue to be the bedrock of everything American Express does. The real thing that has changed is not our approach; it’s the technology. With today’s technology, we can offer premium service and trust without compromise on a scale basis. We’ll continue to offer and improve our products for a highly affluent audience, but we don’t believe that having those products in any way diminishes our ability to bring service, trust and security to a much wide audience through our prepaid offerings.
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Company Name: Rȇv Worldwide
Rêv Worldwide is a global branchless banking network and payments processor that provides innovative financial products to consumers and small merchants worldwide. We are accomplishing this by developing new payment products, turning transactions into relationships, securing distribution agreements with leading retailers, financial institutions, telecommunications providers and governments across the world, further developing our infrastructure and having a fully integrated business and operational model. Rȇv Rȇv Worldwide has created a unique end-to-end global payments and financial services platform that can cost-effectively bring a full portfolio of financial services products to underserved populations in almost any market.
Strategic Approach: Developed back-end infrastructure to integrate with diverse partners that enables Rȇv to achieve economies of scale at a global level while leveraging partners to adapt to local market conditions. Innovative business processes in risk management, compliance, marketing and customer service.
Differentiators:
- Founders pioneered use of prepaid in the U.S. with NetSpend—founded Rȇv to drive financial inclusion at a global scale
- Global branchless banking network and payments processor in 11 countries
- End-to-end global payments and financial services platform to cost-effectively bring financial services to underserved populations in almost any market
- Created innovative prepaid programs including the first prepaid card for airlines that included air miles, rewards points and dynamic currency—OneSmart
- First retail-based GPR card in Brazil, called MEO
- First mobile banking/payments and prepaid card banking program in Mexico, called MiFon
- Launched low cost mobile card reader and utilizing its global payments platform and presence in 12 countries to reach the 400 million SMEs that currently lack access to the financial sector. Rêv’s solution is the only that offers a prepaid card for SMEs to access their customer payments.
Pitch: Rȇv has changed how prepaid is used most recently in three different countries in three different ways: travel, mobile and GPR. Rȇv is one of the few companies that creates prepaid programs that innovate, help people and move the prepaid industry forward both in technology and in usage through new industries.
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Company Name: Discover
Discover is the breakout prepaid company of the year—with the results to prove it. Achieved seven-fold growth in prepaid for 2012, adding a potential to grow the market by more than 250 percent by launching programs that expand the traditional prepaid boundaries.
Strategic Approach: Partnering with game-changing companies to bring relevant solutions to market and tapping into new markets never before explored by prepaid. Using prepaid as a fundamental gateway to enable many emerging payment initiatives. Discover announced a significant relationship with PayPal in 2012.
Metrics: 60% growth in alternative payments, 7-fold growth prepaid growth in 2012, 2.2 million EMV cards in market
Differentiators:
- Outside the box programs (Young Money, EmployeeEdge, iHope, Loyalty Card Plus) achieve great scale.
- Leveraging the network to enable prepaid commerce within new and different form factors to enable non-traditional commerce
- Solves consumer needs in clear, responsible manner
- Goes beyond standard network role to deliver value-added enhancement to programs
Pitch: The Discover approach drives beyond standard solutions—we’re engaged in bringing our partners’ vision to life. This doesn’t always mean a traditional plastic solution. In fact, this is where Discover thrives. We believe prepaid products are much more than a consumer’s financial services product, rather they are an account that is convenient, relevant and integrated into everyday life. Consumers benefit from the convenience and the value the products bring or solve for a need in their lives, and the products we design support frictionless commerce.
*For Paybefore’s purposes, card may mean a physical card or alternate form factor, including a virtual card.
The information provided above was excerpted from Paybefore Award nominations provided by the Nominator. Paybefore has not conducted any independent investigation as to the accuracy or completeness of the submitted information and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or authenticity of such information. All content is provided on an “as-is” basis.
Nominators have agreed to the rules of Paybefore Awards Submission & Eligibility Requirements, which are part of the Paybefore Awards Call for Nominations.
Programs with an in-market start date after Sept. 30, 2012, requested and received a participation waiver from Paybefore.
