Orange Cash Expands to Spain (Feb. 19, 2014)
Mobile network operator Orange is launching its Paybefore Award-winning Orange Cash prepaid MasterCard in Spain. Available to customers of every Spanish mobile carrier, Orange Cash includes a contactless prepaid card, along with a smartphone app that enables free P2P money transfers to other Orange Cash users and account top-up. The only fee attached to the card is for account reloads, according to MasterCard.
Initially launched in the U.K. in early 2011, Orange Cash expanded to Poland in 2012, and is expected to come to France (where its network partner is Visa) this year. The Spain launch is an effort to meet “the preferences and needs of Spanish consumers, who live in a more digital way every day,” noted Ovidio Egido, country manager for MasterCard Spain. Spain is rapidly expanding its contactless payment infrastructure, with more than half of the country’s POS terminals projected to be contactless-ready by year-end, and 5 million contactless cards are already in circulation, according to Visa.
The Orange Cash launch comes a week after MasterCard announced plans to bring its MasterPass online shopping service to Spain, making it the fourth European market in which the network is offering the service, following rollouts in the U.K., Italy and Sweden.
