The Green Sheet Online Edition
August 8, 2008 • 08:08:02
Mirror success with facecard
In July 2008, edõ Interactive launched facecard, a prepaid card targeted toward Generation Y - consumers born after 1977, according to the Opt-In Project. Members of Gen Y think of payments differently than their elders.
Teenagers and young adults today have no knowledge of the pre-Internet age. They take for granted that purchases can be made online at any time, day or night. They socialize and network on Web sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.
But there is a fourth characteristic of Gen Y that edõ Interactive engages: They are wizards with gift cards. Just ask Ed Braswell, Chief Executive Officer of edõ and father of two teenage daughters.
"I saw the amount of gift cards they were getting on the closed loop side and the value that they weren't able to maximize because they were losing the cards; they didn't know their balance; they were not interested in the store," Braswell said.
"And I just said, you know, can we create an open loop product that assures they get the value of the gift received from whoever it is."
Nontraditional banking
Thus was born facecard, an open-loop, MasterCard Worldwide-branded general purpose, reloadable prepaid card that offers Gen Y cardholders incentives for shopping with select retailers.
The facecard is designed to replace multiple, closed loop gift cards with one card that can act as a gift registry, gift exchange and peer-to-peer payment system.
"Payroll can be directed to it," Braswell said. "Gifting can be directed to it. It's a general spend service. And so, in essence, it acts like their debit card that they get from a bank.
But it has a lot more features. It's integrated with their mobile phones, Preward options, account balance delivery, gift card services. Again, we're trying to leverage all the technologies that this generation uses on a daily basis."
Prewards is an edõ-trademarked technology that allows retailers to connect with facecard users. Select retailers load cash deposits on cards if cardholders make purchases at retailers' stores - essentially providing discounts.
When combined with edõCash, a program in which retailers give rewards to loyal patrons, the marketing technologies promote closer relationships between retailers and consumers.
Edõ works with ISOs to sell edõ's marketing platform for facecard as a value added services to merchants. For more information about this opportunity, call Gordon Caldwell, edõ Vice President, Sales and Business Development, at the number below.
Edõ Interactive
615-297-6080 ext. 140
www.edointeractive.com
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