Oct 6, 2009
The O2 Prepaid Card – Is it Time?
So the big boys at Telefonica O2 UK Limited have come up with this wonderful prepaid card offer in the form of the O2 Cash Manager Prepaid Card and the O2 Load & Go Prepaid Card.
The cards are available to O2 Customers only.
Big brands launching a prepaid card proposition is not really a newbie – numerous big, established and fast growing brands like Virgin Money, InsureandGo, The Times, The Sun, the Mirror, Debenhams, Western Union, Rational FX, Caxton FX, Ryanair, talkSPORT and Tesco have tried and achieved success (..or failure) to vastly differing degrees.
So the question would be – is it the brand, the brand audience or the actual product proposition which has been critical to the success or failure of the product. Lets have a look at some of these big brand prepaid card propositions.
- Virgin Money have a fairly successful model that some would argue would be even more successful if they had a more customer friendly pricing structure.
- Rational FX and Caxton FX are not household brand names but have good programmes because the travel money prepaid card proposition delivers significant and obvious value to the customer by providing them with exchange rates which are the best in the market.
- The InsureandGo and Tesco Travel money propositions are no longer available to customers which is more likely a failure of their suppliers as opposed to the branding and product proposition itself.
- The Sun, The Times, The News of The World, The Mirror and any other broadsheet with the largest audiences out there would probably struggle to categorise their programmes as successes.
- Western Union probably have the potential to offer their prepaid card to all customers and make it the most successful programme out there but their current offering is very limited and clearly aims at ensuring that their existing money transfer business model is not cannibalised.
So the point is that consumers are obviously looking beyond the brand and the actual prepaid card proposition has to deliver clear and significant value to the customer.
Can O2 succeed with the O2 prepaid card where others big brands have not? Can they cause the sort of market explosion that the likes of MasterCard and Visa have been predicting for the last 3 years? Teething problems aside, can O2 really deliver on the hype of prepaid cards?
Only time will tell!
Read the O2 Prepaid Card reviews on the Prepaid365 Comparison Site
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Prepaid Marketing is a tradename for Emotion Associates - a digital consultancy that specialises in digital marketing for prepaid credit cards
Thank you for sharing a lot of things inside your blog. I’m looking forward for more of your updates. Thanks again.
I completely agree with you that if o2 cannot open the market up, few others will.
I have got my cards which is great and am hoping to use them soon. Look forward to the o2 prepaid card reviews in due course.
Ciao!
I agree with you Amit, 02 prepaid with VISA will really bring Prepaid into the front line. Consumers will be more aware and the market will expand as bigger names get involved! 2010 will be a great year for Prepaid!