Banco do Brasil and i2c Team Up to Launch Prepaid Cards for Brazilians Living Abroad (Dec. 20, 2012)
Dec. 20, 2012
A division of Banco do Brasil, the largest bank in Brazil, is gearing up to launch a reloadable prepaid card targeting Brazilians living abroad through a new agreement with i2c Inc., the payments processing and emerging commerce technology provider. The collaboration between Banco do Brasil Americas and i2c is part of a long-range plan to offer a range of new products, including prepaid payroll and benefit disbursement cards, as well as prepaid cards for teens, to U.S. consumers, the companies said.
The companies’ first joint effort is a prepaid card program enabling Brazilian students living in the U.S. and other countries to receive scholarship benefit disbursements on prepaid cards in students’ local currencies. A key reason the bank chose i2c was its “global support operations and robust multicurrency, multilingual payments platform,” said Pamela Kohl, Banco do Brasil’s executive vice president of products and channels.
For i2c, the partnership builds on its goal of expanding its payment processing services globally and “enabling a common customer experience across different continents,” said Miguel Cintron, i2c’s vice president of business development.
Brazil is becoming a magnet for financial services development, as its economy ranks seventh worldwide in purchasing power and it has the world’s fifth-largest population of about 200 million and a surging growth rate. InComm in July launched a prepaid commercial product line in Brazil, selling consumers prepaid cards from various entertainment brands through its retail distribution network there. Rêv Worldwide and Brazilian bank Bonsucesso Group in October announced plans to launch a MasterCard-branded GPR. And MasterCard and Telefónica in November announced plans to launch a new mobile-based prepaid product in April 2013, targeting underbanked Brazilians through joint venture MFS. MasterCard projects Brazil’s prepaid market to grow to $17 billion by 2017, from just $1.7 billion in 2009.
