Prepaid Cards

James Le Brocq of Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank says that prepaid cards (or .....-value cards) have been in existence for some years, with the US leading the way in finding applications in both the private and public sectors.

The European prepaid market is currently only in its ....., but this is set to change with the number of cards in circulation estimated to grow at over 110% a year for the next four years.

It is predicted that by the end of 2010 the use of prepaid cards across the eurozone will ..... 2.3 billion transactions with a 75bn turnover.

Prepaid cards represent money on deposit and function in much the same way as conventional debit cards; however, the key difference is that funds are not stored in an account that is directly linked to the card holder, but are ..... onto the card and held at a remote database with a financial services provider.

In this ..... there is no actual value stored on the card itself; they do not act as a substitute for cash, so lost or stolen cards can be easily stopped and replaced.

Clearly such revolutionary payments technology will have a significant impact on UK corporates, with uses falling into several categories, including expenses, payroll and ad-hoc remittances, as well as customer-based payments such as gifts, refunds and ......

In all cases significant benefits ......

The advantages of using prepaid cards for employee expense accounts are significant: as well as the general cost savings that are realised in all cases when switching from paper-based payments, employers using prepaid cards can ..... significantly more control over expenses.

Payments can be ..... by corporate providers, allowing them to limit the scope of where goods and services can be purchased, while a record of all transactions is automatically generated and stored.

Also, employee travel abroad can be easily facilitated as the cards can be loaded with a currency of ..... - thus eliminating costs associated with using a debit or credit card outside of its issuing domicile.