Visa Europe has selected UK smart card specialist Aconite to provide technology to support the development of its new payWave pre-paid card.
The vendor says it will adapt its Smart PrePaid (SPP) software to support Visa Europe’s new pre-paid chip specification. This will be used for a delivery pilot with issuers, designed to minimise the impact and integration requirements with existing systems, before a wider rollout.
Aconite's SSP software enables issuers to perform secure pre-paid transactions offline without the need for online authorisation. The available balance is stored on the card and tracked in a shadow account, reducing each time a purchase is made. The shadow account ensures that once the pre-paid balance is exhausted, no further purchases can be made until it is topped up and the card is updated via an online transaction.
Mike Woods, CEO, Aconite, says: “From our experience there is a high demand for a solution that enables issuers to rapidly embrace the enormous potential that pre-paid brings such as gift cards, payroll and travel, and to address segments such as youth and unbanked.”
Last year Visa teamed with m-banking outfit Monitise to develop a mobile pre-paid account service for the European market. The service will enable customers to create Visa pre-paid accounts on their mobile phones that can be loaded with funds from a bank account or a credit or debit card. The vendor said in February that the first pre-paid product arising from the Visa partnership is expected to launch in the second half of the year.