Apple Pay Integrates with Akimbo Corporate Prepaid Cards
Apple Pay has a new foothold in corporate payroll: Payment Data Systems said that its Akimbo prepaid card program now works with the mobile wallet from the computer maker. The move follows last month’s announcement that ADP had integrated its ALINE payroll card with Apple Pay.
Clients use the MasterCard-branded Akimbo program to send payments, rewards and incentives to workers via prepaid cards. The move builds off the November launch of the Akimbo Now service, which Payment Data Systems calls “a virtual card account that is sent via email and can be used immediately for online purchases or added to a mobile wallet.”
Though consumer credit and debit card payments represent the “bigger gorilla” for Apple Pay in terms of transaction volume, the continuing integration of Apple Pay with corporate prepaid will help give the mobile payment system a lift, says Hugh Gallagher, a principal who focuses on mobile/alternative payments, innovation and payments strategy at First Annapolis Consulting. First Annapolis research finds that prepaid has the smallest wallet share of cards loaded into Apple Pay at 4 percent, compared with 41 percent credit, 30 percent debit, 11 percent store cards and 14 percent loyalty program accounts. “We’ve seen good numbers around card loads and transactions for prepaid overall in Apple Pay, so the Akimbo deal is an overall positive,” Gallagher says
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