25 Intriguing Things About Prepaid You Should Know

The Prepaid space is rapidly evolving and transforming, more than ever before. Here are 25 things of note, we thought you might find interesting:


Outlook


1. $82 billion. That's the amount expected to be loaded onto Prepaid cards in 2012. (Tweet this)

2. The amount loaded on prepaid cards in the U.S. is growing by 42% per year, will hit $167 billion in 2014. (Tweet this)

3. Mobile POS payments is expected to grow from $362.6 million in 2011 to $1.4 billion in 2017. (Tweet this)

4. The use of cash is predicted to decline 3% a year until 2015, (Tweet this) through 2015, the use of cash will decline by nearly $200 billion. (Tweet this)

5. Cash point-of-sale purchases is expected to drop to 23% by 2017. (Tweet this)

6. Prepaid cards are to overtake gift cards in terms of sales by 2014, reach $139.4 billion by 2017 (Tweet this)

Usage


7. Where prepaid cards are purchased makes a big difference in how they are likely to be used (Tweet this)


8. Consumers are using prepaid cards as a way to access wages, direct deposits increased by nearly 70% in 2011. (Tweet this)

9. An estimated $57 billion was loaded onto prepaid cards in 2011. (Tweet this)  

10. 22.1% of consumers likely to use prepaid cards earn between $66,000 and $100,000 a year. (Tweet this)

11. 56 percent of underbanked consumers in this recent study used their prepaid card for online purchases (Tweet this)


Mobile


12. About 15% of the U.S. population is underbanked. They are more likely to use their mobile device for banking. (Tweet this)

13. Mobile payments is said to overtake credit card payments by 2020. (Tweet this)


14. NFC-enabled mobile payments and contactless credit cards are positioned to rival cash by 2016. (Tweet this)


15. 1 in 3 underbanked consumers are likely to conduct international mobile money person-to-person (P2P) transfers. (Tweet this) 


15. More than 10 percent of mobile phone owners have already made payments using their phones. (Tweet this)

Unbanked/Underbanked


16. The share of households with checking declined four percentage points from 2010 to 2011. (Tweet this) 


17. 53% of Gen Y and 47% of underbanked consumers report that rewards would encourage their adoption and use of prepaid cards.  (Tweet this)

18. An estimated 35 million US adults (or 15% of the U.S. population) is underbanked. (Tweet this)

Cashless Society

19. By 2014, transactions conducted via wireless connections from phones world-wide are expected to total $1.13 trillion. (Tweet this)

20. Only 27% of all point-of-sale purchases in 2011 were made with cash (Tweet this)

21. Fifty-three percent of all person-to-person payments are in cash  (Tweet this)

22. In the UK, cash accounts for less than 3% of the “money" in use. (Tweet this)

Global Lens/Emerging Markets

23. The Chinese prepaid cards market valued over US$160 billion in 2011. (Tweet this)

24. Global mobile transactions grew to $241 billion in 2011, and are expected to reach $1 trillion by 2015. (Tweet this)

25. Growth rates in excess of 50% a year annually are expected in China and Poland on cards or through alternative payments channels. Japan has expected growth of 20% a year. (Tweet this)


About the Author

Valerie M. Russo is a Senior Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a technology, anthropology, marketing and publishing business acumen.  She will be attending Prepaid Expo 2013 and covering the event live via Twitter and the Prepaid Expo Blog. She is a published poet and also maintains a literary blog. She may be reached atvrusso@iirusa.com. Follow her @Literanista.

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