Prepaid industry pioneer, Amir Wain, discusses how customer-centricity is key to a successful prepaid business
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – July 22, 2013 – Amir Wain, chief executive officer of i2c, Inc, a provider of cloud-based payment processing and emerging commerce solutions, was featured in a podcast interview on pymnts.com, a leading payments industry news and content website, discussing why prepaid products often target the wrong users. Interviewed by Karen Webster, chief executive officer of Market Platform Dynamics and a leading expert on emerging payments, Wain spoke about the importance of focusing on customer needs when building prepaid and stored value programs. The podcast is a follow-on to a recent i2c white paper “The New Approach to Managing Prepaid Programs” which outlines common program management obstacles and presents a framework for managing profitable prepaid programs.
As Wain asserts in the podcast, to succeed in the prepaid / stored value business, there needs to be a focus beyond a particular card product, such as payroll or gift cards. The focus, he says, should be on understanding customers as individuals and delivering features and services that will fit their lifestyles. “More than ever data is power,” said Wain. “Coupled with analytical tools, data becomes business insight. You need business insight to gain a window into customer preferences and behavior, or you won’t understand what they value.”
Wain also explored with Webster how the continued reliance on service fees is unsustainable in the current market. “Assessing fees to every service available through a card is not a viable business model. Creating a customer-friendly fee schedule and focusing on ways to increase non-fee revenue, such as merchant funded incentives, is what will position companies for long-term profitability,” said Wain.
About i2c Inc.
i2c is a global provider of highly-configurable banking and payment solutions. Using i2c's proprietary building block technology, clients can easily create and manage a comprehensive set of solutions for credit, debit, prepaid, lending and more, quickly and cost-effectively. i2c delivers unparalleled flexibility, agility, security and reliability from a single, global SaaS platform. Founded in 2001, and headquartered in Silicon Valley, i2c's next-generation technology supports millions of users in more than 200 countries/ territories and across all time zones.
For more information, visit i2cinc.com and follow us at @i2cinc.