MANILA, Philippines - MasterCard has reported a growth of 40 percent in gross dollar volume, or GDV, for its prepaid card business across Asia and the Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA) for 2013.
This strong growth was fuelled in part by significant partnerships announced over the last couple of years in the region, such as: The One Smart dual-faced loyalty and prepaid card with Air New Zealand; Qantas Frequent Flyer MasterCard prepaid card; The first ever prepaid card in Japan for online transactions, the Rakuten Virtual Prepaid MasterCard card; mobile companion prepaid card in India in collaboration with Beam Money; National Identity Smart Cards with the Nigerian government; and, agreement with Majid Al Futtaim Finance LLC to expand MasterCard’s unique prepaid solutions across the Middle East and North Africa region (Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon and Oman).
The momentum for prepaid growth is expected to continue given the potential for driving further financial inclusion in emerging markets as well as the increasing cross border and e-commerce transactions.
MasterCard Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa head of Pre-Paid Jason Tymms, said that the needs in emerging markets differ greatly from developed markets and this is proving to be a catalyst for innovation.
“We find ourselves innovating to meet the most basic of needs which is access to financial services, especially for citizens who sit at the bottom of the financial pyramid,†Tymms added.
Likewise, Tymms said that the biggest potential for prepaid growth come out of China given it had the highest number of outbound tourists and amount of overseas spending in the world last year.
“Coupled with the Chinese’ higher purchasing power, this presents an obvious need for electronic payments acceptance when abroad and multi-currency travel prepaid cards such as the MasterCard Cash Passport fit the bill as it takes away the hassle and risk of carrying a lot of cash while also enabling cardholders to lock in exchange rate at the time of loading to avoid fluctuations,†he added.
Officially the world’s biggest spenders, Chinese’ spending on overseas travel increased 28 percent in the first nine months of 2013. In 2012, China became the largest outbound tourism market with 83 million overseas trips, and last year, this number grew even further to 97 million.
It is expected that this year, the number will top the 100-million mark, in what will be a historic first – an amazing feat, considering that this number was just 10 million in 2000.
These kinds of numbers represent the enormous opportunity MasterCard is seeing in the areas of cross border transaction and China aside, across emerging markets in Southeast Asia, India and Japan.
E-commerce is also proving to be a key driver for prepaid growth.
According to MasterCard’s Online Shopping Survey, besides China (97.8 percent) which continues to have a strong potential for making online purchases in the next six months, Southeast Asian markets such as Vietnam (91.4 percent) and Thailand (84.2 percent) are also showing great potential in terms of respondents intending to make an online purchase in the next six months.