Payelp Partners with Qiwi for Reloadable Prepaid Visa Card in Eastern Europe (Jan. 14, 2013)
Jan. 14, 2013
Payelp Global, a Los Angeles-based e-commerce platform serving merchants via 300 different payment gateways worldwide, is expanding its services to include a reloadable virtual prepaid card for consumers in regions that lack broad credit and debit card penetration. The offering builds on Payelp’s existing partnership with Moscow-based Qiwi Ltd., which recently introduced a mobile digital wallet and operates 110,000 self-service payment kiosks in 16 countries, including many Eastern European emerging markets. Payelp is adding the Qiwi Virtual Visa card to its array of options that include credit and debit card, PayPal, bank transfers and mobile payments.
The Qiwi Virtual Visa card enables consumers make secure online purchases through any Website, Payelp said. Users can sign up for the card online and add funds to it through Payelp’s various channels as well as Qiwi’s kiosks that accept cash for mobile phone top-up and bill-payment. More than 50 million Russian consumers use Qiwi monthly to make diverse types of payments, according to Qiwi. The kiosks are concentrated in markets where relatively few consumers have credit or debit cards, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the Ukraine, Payelp said. Adding the Qiwi Virtual Visa card to its offerings enables merchants and consumers to conduct business online “in countries where credit cards are not the normal method of payment,” said Albert Donahue, Payelp Global’s CEO.
