B4B Payments to issue Mastercard prepaid cards
London based B4B Payments, a non-bank issuer of prepaid cards, has announced that it is joining the Mastercard Fintech Express Programme. As such, the company became licensed to issue Mastercard prepaid cards, either directly with Mastercard or through its qualified ‘Express Issuance’ partners.
Last year, Banking Circle acquired B4B Payments and Treezor joined Mastercard’s Fintech Express programme.
Fintech-issued prepaid cards are attractive for merchants because the interchange fees that they pay are lower compared with bank-issued credit or debit cards, at least for consumers. In a response to Commercial Payments International, B4B referred to Mastercard published interchange tables that listed prepaid consumer card fees as 0.2% and commercial card fees as 1.2% or more.
Last year in Europe, Mastercard launched Fintech Express in Europe. The programme falls under Mastercard Accelerate, which is the company’s fintech accelerator platform helping startups and brands to expand their growth and transformation.
In the press note, the CEO of B4B Payments noted that as the company is disrupting business payments by providing a quicker, efficient and cost-effective payments system, this partnership with Mastercard would help them deliver “more choice to organisations looking to scale and succeed via the power of seamless payments”.
B4B Payments is regulated as a Electronic Money Institution in the UK and Lithuania, regulated by the FCA and Bank of Lithuania respectively. It is a principal member of Mastercard Europe and a partner in Visa USA.
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