Prepaid Show Dispatch: Visa, MasterCard Updates

By Steve Kietz, managing partner, Woodbury Advisors LLC

At the Prepaid Show last week, I had a chance to catch up with Brian Triplett, head of Prepaid products at Visa, and Elisa Corridore, global payroll card executive at Mastercard.Triplett says he's seen banks focus on "executing against the core," in other words, offering solid prepaid products that work well and deliver a strong customer experience. "The prepaid platform has been a great source of innovation such as partial authorization, auto-substantiation, and reload capability in convenient everyday locations, as through Visa ReadyLink, that will continue to strengthen the prepaid value proposition," he said.

Visa's initiatives in mobile and money transfer will continue to extend across credit, debit and prepaid products, he said. Visa is very visible in the prepaid space and growing market share, but they are behind the Wal-Mart prepaid card which has the largest market share.

MasterCard's Corridore told me about the American Payroll Association's Money Matters National Education Day, sponsored by MasterCard, which will be held on Sept. 9, 2010. The event is intended to help people entering the workforce understand their paychecks and the payroll withholding system. MasterCard will be helping to educate people about prepaid payroll cards and the benefits they offer. MasterCard will also sponsor four scholarships for junior and senior high school students for continued education, including one scholarship grand prize of $5,000 and three scholarships of $1,000.