Features

Leading the way

In 2000, a French entrepreneur had an idea for a prepaid card aimed at Internet spending for young people called Splash Plastic. That company was renamed Prepay Solutions…

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That history has seen a number of key milestones, particularly in 2007, when Accor Services bought PrePay and positioned the business as a largely B2B interest. In 2009, Accor (now known as Edenred) formed a strategic alliance with MasterCard, and PrePay expanded with a mission to focus on major European prepaid opportunities.

During that time, PrePay Solutions began to think about the different products and services it could offer and this, according to managing director Ray Brash, is where the real story begins.
“We looked at the verticals in which we operated and retail was the obvious one to start with, not just in terms of gift cards; we looked at the kind of loyalty products we could offer and started to work with our clients to develop a comprehensive suite of products, and over time we developed genuine expertise in other sectors such as e-commerce, corporate payments and mobile,” he says.

PrePay Solutions has grown into a business that leads the way in the prepaid industry, drawing on the strengths of its parent companies to deliver a wide range of quality prepaid and electronic payment processing solutions. These services include design, delivery and hosting of a wide range of stored-value card solutions, including prepaid debit cards, retail gift cards and corporate benefit cards, as well as loyalty and promotional products.
In addition, the company also offers programme delivery, product development, card design and sourcing, compliance and regulation, and issuing and processing services.

More recently, the business has been focusing attention on the mobile payments space and launched its end-to-end mobile payment platform in 2012, which was aimed at companies wanting to distribute Mobile PayPass prepaid services. The launch in July with EE, the UK’s biggest mobile operator, of Cash on Tap is the largest launch to date in Europe of an NFC prepaid mobile wallet. This service is available across Europe and addresses everything from traditional issuance and processing, compliance and supply-chain management to fraud and customer-service support.

Dealing as it does with millions of transactions every month and several billion euros of value processed each year, PrePay Solutions is a business in rapid growth, as Brash continues: “When we started, we had about 20 people in one office in London. Now we have 170 in four locations and clients in 25 countries, so my job is to get all of those people working together around a common strategy.”
The UK is just one of its territories – the business has a vast reach and is present in just about every European country, as well as parts of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.
Product innovation is just one part of its success – another significant aspect is the way it works with its clients, which include major brands such as TUI Travel Group, Sainsbury’s, Debenhams, Orange, Ticketmaster and Virgin Money.
Brash says: “We work very closely with our clients to develop bespoke solutions for their needs, and we really focus on ensuring they get end-to-end service. We hold quarterly reviews to look at their business and strategy and talk about how the functionality we have developed across the business can help them achieve their goals.  “We have a large team of project and solutions managers in place to help clients work through their challenges, as well as a strong technical support team who are able to offer expert, practical assistance. “This focused service is something that our clients really appreciate and, in turn, we are extremely proud of the fact that we receive great feedback from our clients, all of whom are major global brands. We help them connect with their customers and our clients know they can rely on us to deliver.”

So what does the future hold for PrePay Solutions? According to Brash, the company will continue to focus on verticals such as retail, with a view to opening up more products to existing clients and gaining more clients in the countries where the company already has a presence.
It will also focus on key markets, including France, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, where card-based technologies are being adopted quickly and companies are looking around, hoping to find the right provider to partner with. Closer to home, the company has recently opened a new 15,000sq ft operations centre in Swindon – the biggest single commercial letting the town has seen in the last five years. “There has been a huge amount of growth within the business,” concludes Brash, “and that is a trend that we can only see accelerating in the future.”

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