Enhancing Your Three "E"s
Make an immediate impact on your organization's economics, efficacy and efficiency by leveraging the widespread power of prepaid.
CONSHOHOCKEN, PA (May 4, 2009) – With the economy ever-slowing and rapidly implemented resolutions at a premium, many public and private sector organizations are turning to prepaid solutions to quickly impact their top- and bottom-line economics, the efficiency of their processes and the efficacy of their payments.
In fact, for the past several years, prepaid solutions have become a natural point of evolution for payments, transforming antiquarian, slow, burdensome paper checks into economical electronic payments.
An Introduction to Prepaid Generally, a prepaid program is a solution to eliminate paper (checks, statements, etc.) from an organization's payment process for faster, cheaper and more efficient payments that are electronically delivered. A prepaid program provides recipients with an electronic account that can be loaded with single or recurring payments from your organization for any reason; benefits, incentives, payroll, rebates, rewards, promotions, referrals, etc.
From this account, delivered funds can be easily accessed by the recipients in a variety of optional ways, including:
- Retail point-of-sale card purchases
- ATM cash access
- Bank teller cash withdrawal
- Bank account ACH fund transfer
- Paper check
At the core of this fund access is a Visa® or MasterCard® prepaid card, which can be fully customized with your organization's branding. This personalized card looks and basically works like a credit card for purchases, but the prepaid card has no credit line and can only be used for the balance loaded into the account. This card allows the recipient to conveniently purchase items or services at millions of retail locations, via phone or online. The card can provide ATM cash access and can also have bank teller cash withdrawal ability as well.
Your program also has a fully custom online cardholder portal for account management, transaction history and balance updates. This online portal also provides an effective direct communication channel to recipients to deliver information, updates and promotions.
There are several payment applications across your organizations that can be quickly impacted with prepaid, including:
- Payroll
- Sales incentives
- Employee rewards
- Consumer rebates
- Referral rewards
- Benefit payments
Even greater, your prepaid solution provides accounts to recipients without any credit checks, bank accounts or burdensome applications. This allows your organization to leverage the significant program benefits on a widespread basis, while reducing the paper and other resources attributed to the administration, production and distribution of payments.
Organizational Benefits
The efficacy of your prepaid programcan be realized almost immediately with rapid, turnkey implementation. On average, prepaid programs launch in a matter of weeks with little to no development required. In fact, prepaid programs leverage your existing payment processes to create a more efficient and cost-effective alternative. By outsourcing program management to a full-service provider, you greatly reduce the costly and time-sensitive burdens felt by your administration.
Among the major benefits your organization will realize with prepaid are:
Eliminated Costs: no more costs to produce and distribute checks (e.g., paper, postage, ink) Streamlined Operations: faster, more efficient payment processing
Reduced Resources: fewer administrative resources to produce and distribute payments Enhanced Efficiencies: reduced manual operations promotes greater productivity
Comprehensive Support: dedicated client and cardholder services teams to support and optimize your program Revenue Opportunities: appropriate applications can help direct spend-back funds
Enhancing Your Economics
Many Citi Prepaid clients report that their prepaid programs reduce the operational costs associated with processing and distributing their payments upward of 80 percent. This elimination of procurement and inventory costs related to items like paper, ink and postage, is often seen as a major immediate victory by the Treasury and Finance groups.
Your prepaid program also offers comprehensive control with a robust reporting package, providing visibility to the entire process and allowing for easier delivery, management, tracking and reconciliation of your payments. Ultimately, this improves your cash flow with reduced payment delivery costs and the ability to increase revenue by driving spend and enhancing your program's efficacy.
Enhancing Your Efficacy
Citi Prepaid solutions are among the most preferred payment delivery method today among recipients. According to a recent 2009 survey of nearly 2,000 prepaid cardholders, 98 percent prefer getting payments to their Citi Prepaid card and 99 percent indicate that the payment delivery speed their card provides is important to them.
Also, clients see the take rates of their programs increase upward of 175 percent thanks to the better communications and preferred payment delivery prepaid provides.
A significant amount of the cost reductions realized with your prepaid program come from the dramatic reductions in the administrative resources required to process your payments, with many organizations experiencing reductions in those required resources upward of 75 percent.
The foundation of this efficiency is a simple, seamless payment system. This is achieved through a streamlined payment file process that is uploaded securely via FTP or online and automatically distributes the payments to your recipients. Citi Prepaid's proprietary, secure ClientZone&trede; online program management platform allows administrators to not only process major files, but also provide single payments, track their program and download reports easily and securely.
Our program's entire backend is strategically designed to provide simplicity and scalability for your program administrators for fast and effective payment delivery, ultimately eliminating the need to produce, distribute and reconcile paper checks.
Benefits to Your Recipients
Prepaid cards provide superior benefits to the recipient over paper checks. Whether the recipients are employees, sales professionals, customers, distributors or beneficiaries, your program provides them with the following advantages:
Faster Delivery: instant payment loads to their card; no more waiting for paper checks to arrive
Flexible access: instant ways to access funds – retail or online purchases, ATM, ACH, etc.
Complete Control: free online management, balance updates via phone, email or text message
Enhanced Security: continuous fraud monitoring, "Zero Liability"* protection, FDIC security
Total Support: 24/7 multilingual Customer Service support
Getting Started
Taking advantage of your Citi Prepaid Services program is fast and easy. With little to no additional development and a world-class team to manage the implementation and support of your program through its entire life cycle, your program provides robust benefits to your organization and your recipients. In fact, our proven methodology has been used to launch programs for more than 1,200 leading private and public sector clients, including more than 40 of the Fortune 100 and government agencies at every level.
By spanning electronic payments via prepaid solutions across your organization you'll be making incredible strides toward achieving greater operational efficiencies and cost reductions with your payments. Even greater, your prepaid program will provide your recipients with the payment method they prefer above all others.
This satisfaction often translates Enhancing Your Efficiency into increased sales, decreased attrition, enhanced loyalty, reduced turnover or boosted revenue, depending on your program's application and goals. These additional payment benefits provide a better experience and subsequently better goodwill for your organization.
Aside from increasing your program's efficacy, your prepaid solution allows you to direct the spending of your payments back to your organization or partners in the case of payments for promotions, rebates, referrals, etc. The unique brand extension and communication channels your program provides to you allow for strategic spend-back of the delivered funds upward of 20 percent.
About Citi Prepaid Services
Citi Prepaid Services (formerly Ecount) is a leading provider of innovative prepaid solutions. Through a consultative approach, Citi Prepaid provides clients with comprehensive electronic payment programs that reduce costs, enhance operational efficiencies and provide an unmatched user experience. Leveraging an extensive payment platform and proprietary prepaid technology, clients around the world depend on Citi Prepaid's custom programs for all types of payments including compensation, promotions and disbursements.
*Terms and conditions apply.