MasterCard reported a growth of 40% in gross dollar volume (GDV), for its prepaid card business across Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA) for 2013 (y-o-y). Cross Border and E-commerce Transactions Key Drivers for Growth.
“We are seeing the biggest potential for prepaid growth come out of China given it had the highest number of outbound tourists and amount of overseas spending in the world last year. Coupled with the Chinese’ higher purchasing power, this presents an obvious need for electronic payments acceptance when abroad and multi-currency travel prepaid cards such as the MasterCard Cash Passport fit the bill as it takes away the hassle and risk of carrying a lot of cash while also enabling cardholders to lock in exchange rate at the time of loading to avoid fluctuations,” says Jason Tymms, MasterCard’s Head of Prepaid, Asia/Pacific, Middle East & Africa.
Officially the world’s biggest spenders, Chinese’ spending on overseas travel increased 28 percent in the first nine months of 2013. In 2012, China became the largest outbound tourism market with 83 million overseas trips, and last year, this number grew even further to 97 million. It is expected that this year, the number will top the 100 million mark, in what will be a historic first – an amazing feat, considering that this number was just 10 million in 2000.
These kinds of numbers represent the enormous opportunity MasterCard is seeing in the areas of cross border transaction and China aside, across emerging markets in Southeast Asia, India and Japan, according to the press release.
E-commerce is also proving to be a key driver for prepaid growth. According to MasterCard’s Online Shopping Survey, besides China (97.8%) which continues to have a strong potential for making online purchases in the next six months, Southeast Asian markets such as Vietnam (91.4%) and Thailand (84.2%) are also showing great potential in terms of respondents intending to make an online purchase in the next six months.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
