Page 62 - Pay Magazine s2014

paybefore awards europe
Best pRoBlem solveR
Best use of a prepaid or emerging payments program to solve a problem for a business.
Travel Welfare
Payment Card Technologies
Partners: Visa, Raphaels Bank, FIS, CPI Card Group
European airlines are required by law to offer light refreshment vouchers (LRVs) to travel ers whose flights are delayed more than two
hours. But the paper-based voucher process is labor intensive and expensive. LRVs typically are written out by hand and manually collated and settled—a process that could take several days.
Payment Card Technologies’ Travel Welfare platform improves the process with a private- label Visa prepaid card limited to use within the airport, loaded and activated when the flight is delayed and deactivated when the flight departs. Integration with the airline’s flight schedule enables cards to be issued quickly and easily.
The Travel Welfare solution automates an outdated manual process, with benefits for all stakeholders, especially passengers.
winneRs Austrian Airlines Prepaid Card PayLife Bank GmbH
Easy Warranty Plan
Epipoli
The program’s advantages go well beyond convenient issuance. For passengers, the
card offers the opportunity to spend funds
at multiple merchants within the airport, whereas each paper voucher typically had
to be redeemed in full at a single merchant. Cards also can be reloaded with additional funds automatically if a flight is delayed further and additional compensation is required.
Merchants get paid more quickly compared with paper vouchers, and the built-in time controls limit fraud from stolen LRVs. What’s more, the airline knows immediately the fi- nancial impact of a flight delay and receives detailed spend information the following day.
After a successful pilot at Gatwick Airport, the system has been installed at all 19 of easyJet’s U.K. airports and is now being rolled out across Europe, including all major hubs: Amsterdam, Madrid, Milan, Rome and Geneva. A full rollout will be completed by year-end. By using prepaid cards to improve an inefficient and time-consuming voucher process, Travel Welfare is taking off in a big way.
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