How Alliance Prepaid MasterCard makes Electronic Transactions for Children and Moneygram e-commerce possible

“It is about safety. Sometimes people come out of an agent location with a bundle of cash and we don’t want that”

President of Alliance Group of Companies, Peter Chin, at the launch of the card at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Kingston on Thursday May 4 2018

Jamaica, get ready for an alternative to Debit Cards that your children can use!

It's called an Alliance Prepaid MasterCard, which is basically a Prepaid Card and it’s being launched by Alliance Payment Services Limited as reported in the article “Alliance Launches First Non-Bank Card”, published Thursday May 3, 2018 by Steven Jackson, The Jamaica Gleaner.

The launch event took place at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in Kingston on Thursday May 5th 2018. MasterCard was represented at the event by Uhreil Bedoya, the country manager for Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Bermuda and Haiti.

With this launch, Alliance Payment Services Limited becomes the first non-bank operation in Jamaican to launch a prepaid card. Good to note that Alliance Payment is an associated company of Alliance Financial Services Limited.

They are an agent of MoneyGram with some over 50 sub-agents nationwide, making this a product aimed squarely at the unbanked in Jamaica who receive their money via remittances.

This may also be their response to GraceKennedy and Western Union's plans to launch their online website and app. This App, possibly using tech tools from cryptocurrency Ripple, will allow customer to both send and receive remittances directly to their Bank accounts as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “How Western Union and GraceKennedy may use Ripple in GK MPay App”.  

So when will the product officially go live? Will this product enable e-commerce?

Alliance Prepaid MasterCard - Electronic Transactions for Children and potential e-commerce Payment platform

A Prepaid Card is basically similar to ScotiaBank's VISA Debit card, which can be used to purchase items online as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to use Scotia VISA Debit Card Online”.

Alliance Prepaid MasterCard, which was two (2) years in the making, will be officially available on Friday, May 11^th 2018 at Alliance’s head office in New Kingston or its agents islandwide. They’ve long had Prepaid Cards in the form of Alliance Payment Services Limited’s ePay Card.

I’d long predicted that ePay would beat out Mobile money as Jamaicans are already used to Debit Cards and inter-ePay transfers would make it popular as noted in my blog article entitled “Alliance Financial Services Limited's ePay will beat Scotiabank and NCB's in Mobile Money Revolution”.

 MICO University is currently one of their biggest clients and are using their ePay platform to go cashless on campus as reported in my blog article entitled “How MICO University College use of ePay is Mobile Money for Miconians as Cross Roads goes Cashless”.

Not only will customer be able to receive their remittance via the card and withdraw via ATM, but relatives abroad will also be able to send money to the card via an Android App.

Because it can be topped up, this could be a convenient option for parents wanting to give their under-aged children a limited amount of money to spend locally as well as online!!! Getting the card is free, but there are usage fees that may be a bit daunting:

1.      JA$40 per withdrawal

2.      JA$10 at point of sale outlets

Still, Prepaid Cards will now be a part of the mix of options to get more of Jamaica's unbanked to use more Electronic Transactions. This mix already includes GraceKennedy GK MPay and Quisk, now that JCCUL 's Quisk is not out of the picture as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “JCCUL Shutters CONEC Mobile Wallet, leaving Quisk and MPay in the Race”.

Eventually more services will be coming to make Electronic Transactions available to all, as pointed out by Minister of Finance, Dr Nigel Clarke, quote: “Of great significance is the fact that the guidelines provide collaboration with existing service providers to bring innovative payment solutions to the market......The service providers are directly relevant to the daily business of Jamaicans. Depending on the providers the services include bill payment, person to person benefits, e-cards, point of sale machines, accounting enquiries, remittance disbursement and others”.

The benefits to the Government is that it reduces the cost of doing business and making taxation universal as predicted in my blog article entitled “How Electronic Transactions in Jamaica can eliminate Hidden Economy via Universal Consumption Taxation”.

 

I am very interested to see if this Alliance Prepaid MasterCard can be integrated into websites and used for e-commerce i.e. buying and selling items online. If so, remittances may not be the only use that this card has and it popular will skyrocket, as it would provide a practical way for Web entrepreneurs to set up e-commerce websites.