Prepaid Expo USA 5 Questions Archive

5 Questions (ARCHIVE)

5 Questions (ARCHIVE)
Amir Wain
What is your job title, and what are you responsible for? I am the chief executive officer. My primary responsibilities include ensuring that we have the right strategy in place and that we are executing to that strategy. I also spend a significant amount of time working with our product design group to carve out the future direction of our products.		Job Title Chief Executive Officer Company i2c Inc. Company Type Prepaid card program processor Tenure at Firm 7 Years

	Describe your biggest challenges, both short-term and long-term. Short term: i2c is growing very fast, and as a result, we face some of the challenges associated with hyper growth. While the technology platform and products are scaling very well, our challenge is recruiting top talent fast enough to keep up with the growth. Long term: The team at i2c has tremendous energy and zeal. Everyone is excited about the differentiation and product leadership we have been able to establish. Our long-term challenges are first, how to prevent prepaid processing from becoming a commodity and second, how to avoid the complacency that can set in as a result of success.

	What is the most innovative prepaid card program you've seen or heard about in the last year? One of our clients, Payoneer, meets a large and growing demand for alternative payment methods, particularly in international markets and the online affiliate business community. Sending thousands of payments all over the world using paper checks is cumbersome and expensive for both the online business and its affiliates. Critical to Payoneer’s success has been the ability to create and deliver new card programs rapidly on behalf of their clients and carry out cardholder validation worldwide. According to Yuval Tal, CEO of Payoneer, their choice of processor was fundamental in delivering the speed, scalability, and flexibility essential to success: “i2c’s C3 Processing Platform enabled us to set up a customer in less than a week. In fact, our fastest setup time was two days (excluding bank approval).”

	Describe how prepaid will fit into your industry in five years. Prepaid is the fastest growing segment of the payments industry and is still in the early stages of its lifecycle. The next five years will see innovation, growth, profitability, maturity, and consolidation. As a leading processor in the prepaid space, i2c will continue to roll out innovative products and capabilities to solve business issues. The fun is just beginning!

	If you weren't working in the prepaid sector, what would you be doing and why? I love creativity and innovation, so whatever else I would be doing would have to offer opportunities for me to be creative. While I believe in leveraging technology, my focus is on finding solutions that improve the quality of life. Successfully doing that gives me a great sense of purpose.
Anabel Perez
	What is your job title, and what are you responsible for? President and CEO. Responsible for setting the strategy and managing operations of NovoPayment, Inc and its subsidiaries.	Job Title President and CEO Company NovoPayment, Inc. Company Type Provider and manager of prepaid card service programs Tenure at Firm 4 years, since the company was founded

	Describe your biggest challenges, both short-term and long-term. In the short term, our biggest challenge is to improve awareness among key players throughout the region about what prepaid is, what it is not, and what it means to their business. The prepaid business is very different than debit and credit and the problems it solves in Latin America are different than in the U.S. Long-term, the challenges are to increase prepaid penetration among the unbanked and expand reloading networks.

	What is the most innovative prepaid card program you've seen or heard about in the last year? In Latin America, we were the first to launch a general-purpose spending card that doesn't require a bank account; we were also the first to launch P2P funds transfer via SMS. I thought that was pretty innovative.

	Describe how prepaid will fit into your industry in five years. NovoPayment expects to maintain its leadership position in the prepaid general-purpose card industry. Right now, 65 to 70% of the Latin American population is unbanked, yet this group holds 45% of the region's purchasing power. This represents a significant market for prepaid card programs.

	If you weren't working in the prepaid sector, what would you be doing and why? I would have continued my career in banking. I love innovating and finding new ways to better serve customers.

Ray Stanton
	What is your job title, and what are you responsible for? Managing Director and founder of SCL (Stanton Consultancy Ltd). I lead the organization that created UltraPoS, the market leading point-of-sale and inventory management system for the pre-paid industry. In particular, I work closely with customers to ensure that UltraPoS continues to deliver innovative functionality to the highest of standards.	Job Title Founder and Managing Director Company Stanton Consultancy Limited (SCL) Company Type Point of Sale, Inventory Management, Automation specialists Tenure at Firm 12 years

	Describe your biggest challenges, both short-term and long-term. Being a private company with no external investment, one of the short term challenges is managing the expansion of our business in line with the growth of the prepaid industry. Longer term, the challenges in any emerging market sector are to appreciate where the opportunities lie, and to communicate these effectively to our customers. In particular, the emergence of the European pre-paid sector will require us to draw on our extensive US experience to maximize the things that work well and to learn from the things that don’t add value!

	What is the most innovative prepaid card program you've seen or heard about in the last year? I think some of the most innovative programs have yet to leave the drawing board but are close to launch. Combining multiple applications around a single card I think will be compelling for customers - for example, a travel agent that offers a savings scheme, a travel money card and an insurance pay-out vehicle in a single piece of plastic. Why not throw in “contactless” for good measure?

	Describe how prepaid will fit into your industry in five years. Prepaid accounts for approximately 50% of our turnover today with bank notes and travelers cheques making up the rest. I would envisage this to remain the case over the next few years but with prepaid penetrating a more varied cross section of sellers, with more innovative products.

	If you weren't working in the prepaid sector, what would you be doing and why? I guess if we weren’t in the prepaid sector we would continue automating bank note and travelers cheque transactions – that’s where we started, and where we are still the world-leader. It’s a mature market, but one that still has many, many business opportunities, not least of which is the emergence of quality pre-paid travel funds programmes!

Lee Britton
	What is your job title, and what are you responsible for? Chief executive officer for Altair Financial Services International Plc. Everything that goes wrong and trying to take the credit if it works. We have a global client base and this can be demanding, as can satisfying shareholder expectations.	Job Title Chief Executive Officer Company Altair Financial Services International Plc Company Type processor and prepaid card program manager Tenure at Firm 1 Year

	Describe your biggest challenges, both short-term and long-term. Managing growth, geographic expansion, changing legislation, developing innovative products to stay ahead of the curve.

	What is the most innovative prepaid card program you've seen or heard about in the last year? Anything we have done! Including our insurance payout/travel card, proximity payments, mobile money remittance (MoneyShare). Watch this space in Q2 for our payroll, insurance, medical, remittance products in Asia!!

	Describe how prepaid will fit into your industry in five years. It is our industry! We see prepaid sitting alongside other mainstream financial products.

	If you weren't working in the prepaid sector, what would you be doing and why? I would be in the wine industry, both as a happy drinker and exporter. We have a vineyard in the Cognac region, which needs some love and attention.

Martin Ferenczi
	What is your job title, and what are you responsible for? I am the CEO of Oberthur Card Systems of the Americas. I oversee the card manufacturing, personalization and fulfillment services of the North, Central and South American region. We are a leading provider of secured gift cards and bank cards.	Job Title Chief Executive Officer Company Oberthur Card Systems of the Americas Corp. Company Type Card Manufacturing and personalization Tenure at Firm 1 Year

	Describe your biggest challenges, both short-term and long-term. Our biggest challenge has always been surpassing our customer’s expectations with the rapid growth in the industry.

	What is the most innovative prepaid card program you've seen or heard about in the last year? That’s easy- Oberthur’s end-to-end solutions programs. Through providing a one-stop shop for our customers we help reduce the headaches caused from using multiple vendors. Therefore, our clients can focus on other aspects of their business.

	Describe how prepaid will fit into your industry in five years. Oberthur has invested significant capital expenditures to meet the growing need of our customers. These expenditures demonstrate our commitment to the prepaid market for the long haul.

	If you weren't working in the prepaid sector, what would you be doing and why? I’ve always enjoyed the game of soccer. I would spend time coaching my son’s soccer team.

Steve Streit
	What is your job title, and what are you responsible for? As the CEO, my role is to, along with our extremely talented senior team, set the corporate vision and guide the overall strategy for Green Dot Corporation such that customers, employees, partners and shareholders all enjoy ever increasing value.	Job Title Founder/CEO Company Green Dot Corporation Company Type (retailer, processor, marketer, issuing bank): financial services Tenure at Firm Founded in 1999

	Describe your biggest challenges, both short-term and long-term. The overarching challenge of any great company is setting and then communicating the right long term strategic vision- or mission- to all employees company wide and then ensuring that the company has the right team and the right resources to execute on that vision. There are numerous divisions and hundreds of employees within Green Dot Corporation that all have to successfully carry their piece of wood to build the arc and that path is always wrought with challenges of various levels of severity on a day to day basis.

	What is the most innovative prepaid card program you've seen or heard about in the last year?Well, I can’t say that I know of every new program in all the facets of the prepaid industry and there may certainly be some really creative and innovative concepts out there. For me, I think our Wal-Mart Money Card program and Wal-Mart Visa Gift Card program are quite innovative on a very large scale. The pro-consumer pricing, ease of availability and feature functionality of these products have made them a big hit for consumers and that success is a source of great pride for our company.

	Describe how prepaid will fit into your industry in five years. Green Dot’s claim to fame is our category of market leading prepaid cards and our money movement network, The Green Dot Network. In that sense, Prepaid products and services will always be a core part of our offerings. As we look down the road, what you’ll see is that prepaid is simply one part of our suite of offerings. Additionally, credit, check processing, bill payment and more will become increasingly important as we continue our evolution into a more fully functional financial services provider for the financially underserved consumer.

	If you weren't working in the prepaid sector, what would you be doing and why?This is actually my 2nd career. My first career was broadcast programming. But whether it’s broadcasting or financial services, I’ve always focused my career on consumer oriented businesses. I love people and I especially have a soft heart for the underserved and underappreciated. So I suppose I’d be an entrepreneur/CEO of a company somewhere that created products and services that made life easier for this population.