MasterCard made a high-profile promotion in prepaid last week, naming Steve Grigg the new president of Access Prepaid Worldwide. The New York-based payments network acquired Access Prepaid for roughly $481 million last April, buying the business from Travelex — where Grigg now works as chief information officer.
But even though Grigg is months away from receiving new business cards from MasterCard (he starts at his new job in May), the recent news shifts at least part of the current focus on prepaid to a business arm that CEO Ajay Banga once called “an important driver for [MasterCard’s] growth in the whole prepaid arena” during a conference call with investors.
Travelex’s prepaid card operations are positioned as an alternative to travelers’ checks; Bloomberg once called the product a “prepaid travel card.” In the aforementioned conference call, CEO Banga said Travelex’s prepaid assets would help MasterCard “shape the future of prepaid, especially in high-growth markets and in the attractive cross-border payments space where we can displace cash.” From those same comments, the New York Times noted that Travelex cards “might well be used by government agencies to distribute payments for programs like Social Security.”
In its 2011 10-K, MasterCard said acquiring Access Prepaid allowed it “to offer end-to-end prepaid card solutions encompassing branded switching, issuer processing, and program management services, primarily focused on the travel sector and in markets outside the United States.”
We’ll do our best to Mr. Grigg on the line as soon as he finds a seat at MasterCard so we can update his goals for Access Prepaid in both the short and long terms.
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