PAYBEFORE AWARDS EUROPE Reprint
Pay Magazine Pay Magazine Volume 7
Issue 1
Spring 2014
Celebrating Excellence In
COSTA DEL SOL
T
he resort city of Marbella, Spain, was the backdrop for this year’s Paybefore Awards Europe celebration, where Paybefore honored winners in 10 categories as well as People’s Choice at All Payments Expo Europe in May. 2014 marked Paybefore Awards Europe’s third year recognizing the innovators expanding prepaid and emerging payments across the continent. With a record number of entries and a record number of categories, Paybefore and its expert judging panel paid tribute to a thriving payments community. “The innovators of our industry know no borders, precisely because they find ways to solve universal pain points for consumers, governments and businesses, while addressing local requirements,” said Paybefore CEO Marilyn Bochicchio, noting that several winners in the European competition also were recognized in the global Paybefore Awards in Las Vegas earlier this year.
Three winners in each of 10 categories, including one Best in Category, were selected by a panel of five industry experts who served as judges for this year’s competition. Judges included Bochicchio; Paybefore’s Editor-in-Chief Loraine DeBonis; Dr. Hugo Godschalk, founder of Prepaid Forum Deutschland; Craig James, CEO of Neopay and chairman of Prepaid International Forum; and Siobhan Moore, senior associate at Locke Lord and a UKGCVA board member. “It’s an exciting time in payments everywhere in the world, but this year’s Paybefore Awards Europe winners demonstrate how quickly prepaid and mobile solutions are replacing legacy paper-based systems,” Bochicchio added. “Paybefore Awards is proud to recognize the organizations that are taking on paper in its many forms—not just cash—to create value for all stakeholders and push the industry into new territory.” For the first time, Paybefore invited visitors to vote on one program or company to be selected People’s Choice. We received more than 1,000 votes and digital gift card provider CashStar took home the prize.
Pay Magazine
BOUNDARY BUSTER Best use of prepaid in a new market segment or industry that (1) expands the reach of prepaid and (2) creates a new vertical market or prepaid business opportunity, solves a payments or customer service issue, or establishes prepaid as a foundation for emerging payments during the past year or over many years.
Bread4Scrap EUROPE
Payment Card Solutions Partners: MasterCard Worldwide, IDT Finance, Carta Worldwide, Nitecrest
W
hen a 2012 British law effectively banned cash from all scrap metal payments to reduce metal theft, Payment Card Solutions (PCS) recognized an opportunity to introduce prepaid to a new sector. The company successfully campaigned lawmakers to include prepaid e-money accounts as a suitable alternative and, in December 2012, PCS launched Bread4Scrap (B4S), a platform combining a prepaid EMV MasterCard with a corporate lending portal to offer an easy and efficient payment solution to an industry that previously relied on stacks of crumpled paper bills.
With the sector largely unfamiliar with prepaid, the program required a hands-on approach to training and implementation, including multiple site visits to scrapyards to build trust and approval. The program had to be financially attractive enough to entice clients to switch from paper payments, while ensuring compliance with new requirements. With immediate online KYC, PIN-based instant-issuance and instant-load capabilities, B4S enables clients to make payments quickly and legally, while reducing cash-related costs, including insurance and security. PCS wasted little time putting the pedal to the metal. In the first two weeks of B4S’s operation, the company issued 25,000 cards across about 40 scrap metal locations, primarily in Southeast England. A year later, more than £60 million (US$100 million) had been loaded onto the platform, with more than 1 million transactions processed. More than 75 percent of all cards have been reloaded multiple times, and B4S has grown to over 100 sites—an expansion largely driven by positive word-of-mouth and customer recommendations. PCS isn’t done busting boundaries. In early 2014, the company expanded the B4S model to other cash-based businesses.
Bread4Scrap is an elegant solution that solves a real-world problem in a not so elegant industry.
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