Accor Services and MasterCard Europe today announced a strategic alliance resulting in the creation of a new company, PrePay Solutions.
The joint venture makes Accor Services the majority shareholder at 67 percent, while MasterCard Europe holds a 33 percent stake in the company.
The new company is designed to combine the prepaid and electronic payments expertise of both organisations for business players looking to benefit from the fast growing €130 billion European prepaid opportunity2.
PrePay Solutions markets prepaid card-based solutions that enable corporations, public sector and financial corporations to reduce costs and enhance efficiency. Both organizations and consumers benefit from the ease, security and convenience of card-based solutions in areas such as rewards and loyalty, gifting, expense management, and card payment for under banked people.
By offering turn-key programmes, PrePay Solutions provides customers the scale and resources to deliver a seamless prepaid solution including marketing support, transactions
handling and customer support services. The flexibility of the MasterCard Worldwide Network to support prepaid solutions provides scalability options and speed to market in Europe.
The creation of PrePay Solutions is underpinned by Accor Services’ subsidiary PrePay Technologies – a UK market leader in prepaid cards – and acquired in 2007 by Accor
Services. PrePay Technologies’ nine-year strong marketing and operating experience has already helped to bring more than 20 million cards covering a broad range of prepaid
solutions to the UK, and also includes a licence to issue e-money in 17 European countries.
PrePay Solutions will provide services to Accor Services and MasterCard, enabling each firm to develop solutions for its respective clients: corporate and government clients for
Accor Services, banks and other financial institutions for MasterCard. At the same time, PrePay Solutions will market prepaid solutions direct to its own customers such as retailers.
