Power Couple: prepaid & mobile make formidable pair

by: Konrad Christensen

Prepaid options are playing a key role in the development of mobile wallets. Because prepaid is essentially the model behind a number of mobile payment solutions, it’s no doubt prepaid will continue to play a significant role in the future of mobile wallets.

Evidence of the prepaid model’s popularity among consumers can be seen in its growth, which is accelerating at a rate  faster than even credit and debit cards.

Recent announcements suggest mobile wallet providers understand the merit in marrying their high-tech solutions with the convenience of prepaid. Swedish mobile payments company Seamless has teamed up with InComm, a prepaid product and transaction services company, to allow users to store digital reloadable prepaid cards into Seamless’ SEQR wallet. SEQR is a mobile wallet available in 30 countries currently processing 3 billion transactions per year. The U.S. market will be the first launch location for the combined SEQR/InComm offering.

SEQR isn’t the only mobile wallet with a prepaid component. Softcard (formerly Isis) mobile wallets feature a Softcard and Amex co-branded prepaid card, which has made Softcard more appealing to the nearly 70 million U.S. unbanked or underbanked consumers.

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