Store Financial Offers Students a Safe Way Home (Sept. 8. 2014)
As another school year beings, a new prepaid card is helping ensure college students have a safe ride home after a night on the town. The Home Safe Card, launching as a pilot at the University of Tampa, is the brainchild of Perry Anderson, a police officer with the Tampa Police Dept., who hatched the idea after his nephew was involved in a near-fatal car accident. To ensure students always have funds available to pay for a taxi, bus or subway ride home, the Home Safe Card can be redeemed only for approved transportation uses. The program runs on the controlled redemption platform of Overland Park, Kan.-based program manager and processor Store Financial.
Store Financial CEO Eric Mettemeyer notes that the card was a great fit for the company’s controlled redemption platform, as opposed to a traditional closed-loop model. “On a closed-loop platform, you have to have access to all of the merchants for acceptance, but in this case you have all sorts of businesses, like bus companies and taxi companies, so that’s where the MasterCard network comes in handy,” he tells Paybefore. The cards will be distributed online, on-campus and at nearby bars and restaurants. Promotional materials also will be mailed to parents. The card will be non-reloadable initially, with a switch to a reloadable model planned for the future, notes Mettemeyer.
And the Home Safe Card’s potential uses extend beyond college students. The card could also be used by the elderly to pay for transport to and from assisted living facilities, or by military veterans, according to Mettemeyer. “Despite some of the recent unwarranted negative press around prepaid, this is another example of prepaid filling a gap and providing a useful service,” he says.
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