About Prepaid

The prepaid industry is vast and complex. MasterCard projects global prepaid card expenditure to exceed $600 billion by 2015, with half of that volume being transacted in the US alone. Prepaid cards, also known as stored value cards, is a broad category that includes telephone cards, merchant gift cards, Visa Gift Cards, promotional cards, rewards cards, rebate cards, payroll cards, FSA cards (Flexible Spend Account), HSA cards (Health Savings Account), EBT cards (Electronic Benefit Transfer i.e.: Food Stamps & Cash, including State General Assistance and TANF or Temporary Aid For Needy Families), transit cards, GPR cards(General Purpose Reloadable), mall cards, and more.

In general, prepaid cards may be placed into three categories:
A) Closed-loop cards (i.e.: store gift cards)
B) Open-loop cards aka Network-branded prepaid cards (i.e.: Visa Gift Card)
C) Hybrid cards aka private-labeled cards which run over an open-loop network with restricted access (i.e.: mall card)

Brief Prepaid History:
1956 BankAmericard credit card launched
1976 Debit cards are issued
1988 Phone cards are introduced
1995 Blockbuster launches the first gift card
1998 Network-branded prepaid cards are pioneered by iCARD
2001 First prepaid Visa promotional card delivered by iCARD for Sprint
2002 Visa Gift Cards are marketed online by iCARD
2004 The gift card mall is introduced
2005 GPR, FSA, HSA, Payroll and other network-branded prepaid cards are adopted
2007 Digital gift cards and "super gift cards" delivered online gain popularity
2009 Congress passes landmark gift card legislation
2010 iCARD is a leader in the delivery of corporate prepaid visa and gift card solutions