Business Services Industry
Advanced Payment Solutions Moves Europe's Leading MasterCard-Branded Prepaid Portfolio to Metavante
Business Wire, April 17, 2008
LONDON -- Metavante Technologies Ltd. today announced an agreement with Advanced Payment Solutions (APS), making it the payment processing house for the entire prepaid portfolio of APS, including the award-winning cashplus prepaid gold MasterCard, the Gap Year cashplus card and a range of other fully re-loadable prepaid MasterCard programmes. APS is a leading provider of general purpose prepaid cards and payment solutions in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. In January 2008, Metavante Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:MV), a leading provider of banking and payments technology, announced the acquisition of London-based Nomad Payments Ltd. Nomad now operates as Metavante Technologies Ltd. and continues Nomad's legacy of being a leading provider of prepaid and debit card processing and licensed software.
Related Results
APS has already begun directing all of its new business to Metavante Technologies Ltd., and is in the process of transitioning its core portfolio during April. When complete, the portfolio migration will represent the largest prepaid card portfolio migration in Europe, with over 200,000 account customers transitioning to Metavante Technologies Ltd.'s platform.
Representing a significant processing opportunity for Metavante Technologies Ltd., APS' prepaid portfolio, led by its cashplus card, has built a loyal following. Since cashplus launched in 2005 and became the U.K.'s first general purpose MasterCard, cardholders have loaded over PS200 million onto the cards. Mercator Advisory Group research points towards a healthy European growth pipeline for prepaid transaction processing. According to Mercator, prepaid payment card spending in Europe is estimated to reach $164 billion (USD) by 2010. As for the U.K. specifically, the same research forecasts total prepaid spend will reach $34 billion (USD) by 2010, making the U.K. Europe's largest market and the fourth largest market worldwide.1
"We did due diligence on some of the world's top processors, and Metavante Technologies Ltd. clearly stood out -- not only with its proven CORTEX platform and the technology to support prepaid card applications, but with a team of seasoned payments professionals who really understood the specific needs of a prepaid proposition," said Rich Wagner, chief executive, Advanced Payment Solutions.
As part of the Metavante-APS arrangement, Metavante provides APS with a range of services including: card issuing and account management, transaction processing and authorisation prepay features such as Web services, scheme gateways and compliance, as well as reporting and management information. APS will also employ Metavante's fraud and compliance monitoring system and its call centre application.
Wagner continued, "Metavante Technologies Ltd. delivers the compelling attribute of being more than just a processor -- it's also a technology provider with core processing capabilities, plus extensive prepaid processing experience in the advanced US market. They have provided us with a reliable solution and flexible fee structures that will enable APS to offer a greater range of 'pay as you go' charging combinations and, therefore, a greater range of future products to our clients. This is a vital factor in the prepaid card business, which has tighter margins and more disparate cardholder behaviour than other debit and credit portfolios."
"To gain the entirety of APS' market-leading prepaid portfolio is a most notable achievement and vote of confidence in the role we can play in our clients' success," said John Yeomans, president, Metavante Technologies Ltd. "To put this transaction processing growth opportunity further into perspective for Metavante, consider that industry research predicts 10 percent of an estimated 3 million un-banked U.K. consumers will use prepaid for daily money management by 2010.2 With the strong position APS already enjoys in the European prepaid market, coupled with the powerful value proposition of APS products like cashplus, this arrangement puts Metavante in an enviable growth position. The stronger we can make our clients' products, the better we can serve their cardholders, and we look forward to helping APS bring new value-added functionality to their customers."
Processing over 80 million ATM, credit, debit and prepaid cards for clients worldwide, Metavante Payment Solutions offers prepaid card personalization and account processing for both merchant-issued (closed-loop) gift cards and network-branded (open-loop) prepaid cards, such as payroll, government-benefit disbursement, shopping mall, incentive, open-loop gift, rebate and loyalty/reward cards. Metavante also supports prepaid-reload transaction processing.
About Advanced Payment Solutions
Advanced Payment Solutions was established in early 2004 to become the pre-eminent leader of general purpose prepaid cards and payment solutions in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. Its senior management team and board of directors have unparalleled experience in the prepaid and payment industries, bringing together experience from Barclaycard, GE Money, VISA, Bank of America, Netspend, Western Union, Diners Club and Citibank. The company, backed by leading US private equity and venture capital firm Trident Capital, aims to lead U.K. prepay market growth to emulate the success of prepaid payment cards in the US where prepaid cards now make up a trillion dollar market. APS' first prepaid payment card, the cashplus prepaid MasterCard, launched in September 2005, is the U.K.'s first general purpose prepaid chip and PIN payment card. Cardholders can top-up their prepaid MasterCard card at over 20,000 outlets throughout the U.K. Alongside developing its cashplus product portfolio, APS provides a suite of services for businesses wanting to offer branded prepaid products to their customers. APS' wholly-owned subsidiary, APS Financial Ltd, is authorised by the FSA as an e-Money issuer and is a Principal Member of MasterCard. Consumer website: www.mycashplus.co.uk; Corporate website: www.apsgroup.com
- 5 Rules for Immediate Annuities
- Death in the Family: 12 Things to Do Now
- Dumbest Things You Do With Your Money
- 6 Online Networking Mistakes to Avoid
- 401(k) Mistakes to Avoid
- 5 Economic Scenarios to Keep You Up at Night
- The Real ‘Best Places to Retire’
- Best Credit Cards for You
- 12 Tough Questions to Ask Your Parents
- The Real ‘Best Colleges’
- Home Buyer Tax Credit: How to Cash In
- Why You Shouldn't Bash Cash
- 8 Phony 'Bargains' and Better Alternatives
- Danger: 3 Debit Card Scams to Avoid
- 6 Myths About Gas Mileage
- 29 Fees We Hate Most
- Quick and Easy Ways to Boost Returns
- Best Stocks to Buy Now
- Lower Your Taxes: 10 Moves to Make Now
- New Jobs: 8 Lessons from Real-Life Career Switchers
- The New Job Market: Who Wins and Who Loses?
- Health Care Reform's Public Option: Everything You Need to Know
- Volunteer Work When Unemployed: Should You Work for Free?
- Whose Recovery Is This?
- Long-Term-Care Insurance: 4 Biggest Risks to Avoid
Content provided in partnership with
Most Recent Business Articles
- Multiple criteria evaluation and optimization of transportation systems
- Multi-criteria analysis procedure for sustainable mobility evaluation in urban areas
- A two-leveled multi-objective symbiotic evolutionary algorithm for the hub and spoke location problem
- Multi-criteria analysis for evaluating the impacts of intelligent speed adaptation
- The development of Taiwan arterial traffic-adaptive signal control system and its field test: a Taiwan experience
Most Recent Business Publications
Most Popular Business Articles
- 7 tips for effective listening: productive listening does not occur naturally. It requires hard work and practice - Back To Basics - effective listening is a crucial skill for internal auditors
- LIFO vs. FIFO: a return to the basics
- FAS 109: a primer for non-accountants - Financial Accounting Standards Board's "Statement 109: Accounting for Income Taxes"
- Too Young to Rent a Car? - 25-years-old the minimum age for car renting - Brief Article
- Design a commission plan that drives sales - Sales Commissions


