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16/07/2010 -
Visa is telling consumers in the U.S. to swap their cash transactions for credit card machines.The credit card company has announced a new marketing campaign that will encourage consumers to invest in reloadable prepaid debit cards to make purchases with instead of cash.
The campaign targets the approximately 80 million underbanked consumers in the U.S. who rely mainly on cash to complete transactions. Visa hopes to emphasize that prepaid cards offer users greater security in case of theft and more convenience by allowing them to make purchases online.
Research by the Mercator Advisory Group found that a very small percentage of the underbanked made use of prepaid cards in 2009. "This clearly demonstrates that the industry has a significant opportunity to more strongly communicate the benefits of prepaid cards to consumers," said Tim Sloane, director of the Prepaid Advisory Service at Mercator.
Visa is not the only company to recognize that the prepaid market is growing. MasterCard recently commissioned a study which found that the market for branded prepaid cards is expected to quadruple by 2017, surpassing $440 billion.
