Highlights strategic opportunity for the financial services industry to provide tools that help consumers budget effectively
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – April 1, 2014 – A white paper released today to mark the start of Financial Literacy Month in the United States details the benefits of prepaid and related technologies in helping consumers manage their finances. The paper, “Budgeting: How Prepaid Helps Deliver Personal Financial Success”, examines the underlying reasons why consumers choose to budget, challenges encountered in the budgeting process, and specific prepaid technologies that help consumers overcome the challenges. i2c Inc., a provider of prepaid processing and emerging commerce solutions, commissioned Gx, a global payments research firm and consultancy, to develop the paper.
Budgeting is considered by experts to be one of the most effective tools consumers can use to build a strong and stable financial future. The paper’s author, business professor and consumer finance researcher Dan Horne, says that today’s prepaid technologies are effective for budgeting because they provide mechanisms that help consumers overcome some natural tendencies that often lead to financial missteps.
“In a promotion-driven economy, there are always strong impulses to make the kind of unplanned purchases that derail the best intentions of consumers,” he says. “Prepaid cards by their very nature train people to spend only what they have. Features of these cards, such as specific spending purses, text alerts and consumer-appointed financial buddies, provide additional proactive assistance to help consumers stay on a sound financial path.”
“Banks and financial institutions stand to gain a competitive advantage by helping to meet consumer needs for more effective budgeting tools. Those that can package these tools into a financial management solution that helps consumers achieve personal financial success will enjoy more loyal and potentially profitable customers,” adds Horne.
To download the free white paper, click here.
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.