MasterCard rePower launches in UK

This month saw the launch of MasterCard rePower®, the service that lets cardholders reload their prepaid MasterCard cards with cash. The service is provided by our client CQR Payments, with the front-end website designed and built by Fifth Dimension.

MasterCard rePower allows consumers to load cash
onto their prepaid card via the MasterCard rePower website.

Cardholders buy Ukash vouchers from thousands of participating retailers and enter their unique voucher codes into the website at www.mastercardrepower.com to instantly top-up their MasterCard prepaid cards.

The cash load process is quick, convenient and secure and provides financial inclusion to a significant number of people that would otherwise not be afforded the ability to pay with plastic. The cash reload service is currently available in the UK, with roll-out to other European countries in the very near future. The Kalixa Card is the first prepaid card that can be loaded in the UK via the MasterCard rePower service. 

Matt Lanford Head of Prepaid at MasterCard Europe added: 

"By enabling cash electronification to take place at a far wider range of merchants or online, MasterCard is creating a series of environments where prepaid can be disruptive to the normal flow of cash in our society and where those people bound to cash can take advantage of the security, convenience and control offered by prepaid."

For more information, read our MasterCard rePower case study or visit www.mastercardrepower.com

Failure Is Not An Option

We’re very pleased to announce that our recent work for UNICEF UK, the UK presence of the world’s leading children’s organisation, is now live at www.unicef.org.uk.

We were asked to increase the impact and effectiveness of UNICEF UK’s campaigns online, and optimise the donor journey to increase the rate and value of donations. The project encompassed a reworking of UNICEF UK’s home page and content pages, with a focus on the donation page variations.

We built flexible page templates using EPiServer CMS 6, which allowed UNICEF UK’s web editors to create bespoke customised donation pages using a suite of dynamic components. We designed these components to tap into UNICEF UK’s live campaign data, specifically to leverage the power behind the psychology of charitable giving which, although sharing some similarities to the persuasive techniques we use to guide our work in the commercial payments sector, is considerably different – and much more complex.

We boiled down our knowledge and research into a 37-point checklist of psychological principals, which we then combined with another (considerably longer) checklist of usability, design and technical principles, to inform all content, layout and functionality. The resulting elements give UNICEF UK’s website editors a variety of complimentary tools with which to create, test and learn, with the goal of improving the effectiveness of their donation pages with each successive iteration.

We’re extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with such an important organisation, and we’re proud of our work on unicef.org.uk. We enjoyed being pushed both creatively and technically, driven even harder than usual by the fact that the consequences of delivering an inferior solution were significantly more disastrous than the loss of a client or not being paid.

Visit www.unicef.org.uk to experience the donor journey first-hand and make a donation, or read our case study which explains the project in more detail. On second thoughts, forget the case study – just go and make a donation!

Yet another Mobile POS: Adyen

It's another week, so yet another article on a Mobile POS system - this time from the gigaom.com website look at how Adyen's Shuttle compares against existing devices from iZettle and Payleven.

Yet another Mobile POS: Adyen's Shuttle

The interesting point is that Adyen is not aiming at the small business and sole traders that the likes of iZettle and Payleven are targetting, but the larger business. They are also looking to white label the product which they can do due to their end-to-end payment processing, and so are not reliant on banking partners.

We've previously highlighted our concerns over the issue of consumer trust in these devices. But that can be alleviated through greater exposure and resultant familiarity to the product, coupled with a brand that they trust. Being able to deliver larger volumes of units will help with the former, and white labelling the latter.

But if there's one thing we can be certain of...the space around Mobile POS is only going to get more crowded, not less.

Read the full article on the gigaom website