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Lessons from Down Under
“There also is a good mix of pay- ment providers, vendors and pay- ment associations all with local presence in Australia that are helping bring solutions to market on a regular basis.”
Card penetration also is high.
The latest research indicates
there are more than 50 million payment cards circulating among 23 million Australians, according to Nick Dinopoulos, vice pres- ident and general manager, cur- rency exchange, American Express. “Of these cardholders, 81 per- cent are over the age of 15 years and everyone who qualifies for a credit card already owns at least one card.”
Prepaid Demand on Upswing
Despite a low interchange en- vironment, which restricts revenue opportunities, prepaid is a growing segment in Australia, too. Business is expanding across consumer and corporate prepaid, according to Scott Salmon, general manager, international, at i2c. The global pay- ments processor recently opened an office in Sydney to serve growing prepaid demand in Australia. On the consumer side, i2c is seeing strong demand for multicurrency travel cards, gift cards, cards for online spending, multifunction membership cards and GPR cards. On the cor- porate side, clients are asking for incentive, voucher, commission payments and gaming cards.
“We expect to see solid growth over the long-term in Australia as the demand for prepaid continues
Prepaid travel
cards are becoming increasingly popular in Australia, where we’ve seen 70 percent annual growth in this cate- gory since 2013.
—Andrew Cartwright, MasterCard
to expand into new sectors,
such as corporate travel, gov- ernment benefits disbursement, loyalty and budget management,” Salmon explains.
What’s more, cash usage is on the decline, adds Andrew Cartwright, senior vice president and country manager at MasterCard. ATM withdrawals are at a decade low,
with the value of cash withdrawals at AU$10.7 billion (US$7.8 billion) in February. “Contactless payments have played a big part in this shift, by moving many smaller transac- tions to cards,” Cartwright explains. “Around seven out of 10 Master- Card transactions below AU$100 (US$72.87) are now contactless
in Australia.”
Travel Cards Dominate
Depending on the experts you ask, several types of prepaid cards are popular in the country, which is increasingly dependent on plastic, but cards related to travel/foreign exchange (FX) and cards with a built-in loyalty program are proving the most successful.
“Consumers are choosing prepaid cards as it meets their needs of a secure way to manage their spend,” says Rob Walls, Visa’s head of product for Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. “For exam- ple, travel prepaid cards allow consumers to separate their funds from their everyday spend and save for an overseas holiday, as well as have certainty around exchange rates. Travel prepaid cards also eliminate the need to travel with large sums of cash.”
Australia has the perfect conditions for running successful travel card programs because of its geographi- cal remoteness to desired holiday locations, such as the U.S., the
U.K. and Europe, and because of Australians’ adventurous culture, notes Duncan Currie, regional director, Asia-Pacific for London-
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