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PeoPLes trust
For the past nine years, Vancouver, B.C.-based Peoples Trust has been behind the scenes as a Canadian issuer for prepaid programs that span consumer and business categories, including reloadable and gift, government disbursements, health care and incentives. The financial institution runs approximately 600 prepaid programs, including the popular InComm Vanilla payment cards and Titanium+ reloadable cards.
Peoples Trust has been in the spotlight during the last 18 months because of a string of high-profile programs, such as partnering in a disaster relief program that put cards in the hands of thousands
of flood victims in Alberta, Canada, earning it a 2014 Paybefore Award in the Prepaid with Soul category; issuing the Rogers Prepaid MasterCard to be used with the suretap mobile wallet; serving as the Canadian issuer of the EMV-enabled Cash Pass-
port Prepaid MasterCard Currency Card; and par- ticipating in the Canadian expansion of InteliSpend’s 5% Back program for prepaid incentive cards.
simPLytaPP
Over the past year, host card emulation (HCE)
has been hailed as the long-awaited step that
will bring contactless payments to the mainstream. Should that happen, SimplyTapp will be largely
to thank. The Austin, Tex.-based startup created HCE in 2011, while tinkering with Android’s open source code.
“From working with NFC chipsets in the past,
we knew it was possible for the HCE technology to exist and presumed it was not being exposed because of operating system- or mobile network operator-imposed limitations,” says Doug Yeager, co-founder and CEO. “Because Android was an
After recent high-profile program launches and international recognition, Peoples Trust is no longer flying under the radar.
to create NFC functionality without needing to incorporate an MNO into the process.
The next step was convincing Google to incorporate HCE into the Android OS. In October 2013 Google said it would feature HCE in its new 4.4 KitKat version—an announcement Yeager calls the com- pany’s “happiest day.” Other major milestones followed, including official support from MasterCard and Visa this past February.
In the wake of HCE’s fast rise to prominence, interest in the technology has surprised even
its inventors. “We opened the door to HCE tech- nology, but the end result has exceeded our initial expectation,” Yeager says.
“If somebody comes to us with a good application for prepaid, we can give them a full solution,” says Gerry Serratore, vice president, sales and business development, Peoples Card Services. “We’re a sponsor financial institution and have multiple program managers, processors and credit manu- facturers to choose from.”
Peoples Trust also became an issuer of the Dell Advantage ePromotional card, which has driven
an impressive 50 percent repurchase rate among custom- ers and earned Peoples Trust and StoreFinancial an award in Canada this year.
The startup behind three little letters that could be the biggest deal in contactless payments.
open source OS,
we also knew it was possible for anybody to see the code and make changes to it to expose the tech- nology.” By emulat- ing a smartphone’s secure element
in the cloud rather than embedding
it in the phone, HCE enables developers
volume 7 • fall 2014
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