Each company is already well established in its own market: Avantra providing payment and processing solutions worldwide and PrePay Technologies Ltd. delivering prepaid card programmes for major UK retailers (such as Debenhams, Comet and The Arcadia Group) and money transfer organisations such as Western Union.

Philippe Dufour, CEO of PrePay Technologies Ltd., said, "This powerful partnership will leverage the expertise of both businesses to offer tailored prepaid card solutions to financial institutions (FIs) and non FIs which can be used across the range of payment channels including ATM, retail, mobile, POS and Internet."

Programmes include prepaid gift cards, travel cards, benefit payment cards, payroll cards, remittance cards, secure internet payment cards and prepaid debit cards for those that are unbanked.

Although the agreement has only recently been signed, the partnership is already working on a number of applications, including several for local authorities. Commenting on the deal, Steve Smith, Managing Director of Avantra, said, "We selected PrePay Technologies as our partner as they have a unique combined set of expertise in delivering prepaid programme design and integration, hosting and processing, and compliance/regulation. We are confident that our partnership will achieve significant penetration in the emerging UK prepaid market and deliver new opportunities for our customers in financial services, retail and the public sector."