Prepaid Cards: A Survey of Bank Attitudes, Adoption Rates, and Deployment Plans

Prepaid Cards: A Survey of Bank Attitudes, Adoption Rates, and Deployment Plans

Mercator Advisory Group reports findings of a survey of banksfor the American Bankers Association

Boston, MA - October 20, 2012 Prepaid cards are one of the fastest growing segments of the financial services industry, but banks' attitudes toward them vary, according to a study by Mercator Advisory Group for the American Bankers Association.

Prepaid Cards: A Survey of Bank Attitudes, Adoption Rates, and Deployment Plans, a Mercator Advisory Group survey for the American Bankers Association, asked banks of all sizes about their use or planned use of various prepaid financial services products such as general purpose reloadable (GPR) cards, gift cards, payroll cards, government disbursement cards, and HSA cards.

The results of the survey identify how banks perceive these prepaid markets, which departments take the lead during the evaluation, and which departments lead the deployment. For banks that have already deployed prepaid or are preparing to launch a prepaid product, this survey identifies if they intend to be the issuer and why or why not, and how tightly they expect to integrate prepaid to existing teller terminals, ATM networks, and key business processes such as CIP.

The survey discovers that the more involved a bank is with prepaid, or the more research it has conducted, the more likely it was to report satisfaction with the prepaid market opportunity and the prepaid regulatory landscape.

"For banks, the hardest aspect of deploying a prepaid product is most often the challenge involved related to systems integration and business process integration," comments Tim Sloane, director of Mercator Advisory Group's Prepaid Advisory Service. "This survey indicates that banks generally intend to implement a full integration and fail to recognize that some prepaid implementations, such as Budgeting Cards, don't actually require ATM or teller support."

Highlights of this report include:

- Banks' top reasons for deploying or electing not to deploy prepaid cards

- Additional reasons banks consider important for offering prepaid products

- The percentages of banks currently offering or planning to offer a prepaid gift card and/or a GPR card product

- The percentages that view current demand for prepaid products as favorable or highly favorable

- Which prepaid products are being considered and how banks intend to execute these products relative to existing teller systems and business processes

One of 44 exhibits in this report:

This report is 35 pages long and contains 44 exhibits.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group's Prepaid Advisory Service have access to this report as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access, and other membership benefits. Please visit us online at www.mercatoradvisorygroup.com.

For more information and media inquiries, please call Mercator Advisory Group's main line: (781) 419-1700 or send email to info@mercatoradvisorygroup.com.

For free industry news, opinions, research, company information and more, visit us atwww.PaymentsJournal.com.

About Mercator Advisory Group

Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.