The NBPCA is pleased to have ENACOMM as its newest member. ENACOMM provides customer service tools for card programs. We spoke to Michael Boukadakis, ENACOMM’s Chief Executive Officer, via e-mail about the company's business and the future of the prepaid market.

What is your company's role in the prepaid market?
ENACOMM is a FinTech company that provides innovative, interactive and intelligent customer self-service applications and assisted-service solutions to the prepaid market. ENACOMM utilizes web, mobile, SMS texts, email, voice and other communication technology channels to provide customers with a superior, multi-modal self-service experience. ENACOMM’s technologies improve the customer experience, fight financial fraud and increase operational efficiency.

What kinds of prepaid programs do you support?
ENACOMM is a multi-branded, multi-tenant solution supporting many types of cards including Loyalty, General Purpose Reloadable, Payroll, Government Benefits, Gift, Credit, Debit, Charge, ATM, Stored-Value, Fleet, Open-Loop, Closed-Loop and others.

What kinds of special features do your programs offer?
ENACOMM has the products and services organizations need to drive efficiency, provide outstanding customer service and increase profitability. A list of our products includes:

• Hosted IVR, featuring personalized, intelligent customer voice interactions.
• 4Cast, a hosted CRM product that automates intelligent customer interactions, predicts future behavior and conducts targeted messaging campaigns.
• eKBA, mobile “knowledge-based authentication” including automated account activation.
• ViA, a cost-effective, easily-implemented analytics tool for call centers with real-time IVR, CTI and Quality reporting, monitoring, and alerting.
• Fraud Control Module (FCM), ENACOMM's modular application with customizable fraud indicators that integrates with the ViA reporting system.
• Engage, a browser-based console to manage and extend the capabilities of the IVR, unifying interactions across the web, chat, email, fax and voice recognition channels.
• eAlerts, automated outbound calling, SMS texting and emails.
• ENCART, ENACOMM Network Call Allocation Routing Tool.
• Eva, authenticates and protects your customers using voice biometrics.
• Voice eSignature, for legally binding voice biometric signatures.
• VPA, AI-based Conversational Banking with ENACOMM's Virtual Personal Assistant for financial institutions' self-service users.
• VIVR, Visual IVR taking the traditional IVR into the digital arena to deliver rich media content and interaction straight to customer cell phones even while they are on the phone.
• eTDoS Guard, protect your institution against telephony attacks.

What kinds of companies are you looking to partner with?
ENACOMM partners with Financial Institutions, Card Companies, Retailers, Distributors, Marketers, Program Managers and Processors.

What do you think the future of prepaid holds in the next five years?
Prepaid will continue to grow as direct-to-consumer, commercial, and government programs add additional functionality and capabilities for payment. New technologies to increase security and convenience are evolving, making the user experience more secure and seamless. Cardholders want Omni-Channel Support that provides choice, ease, courtesy, security and control, which are all delivered by the ENACOMM Suite of Solutions.

I recently had the pleasure to participate on a panel at the Opal Fintech conference in Rhode Island with Silvio Piserchia (Mastercard), Tim Sloane (Mercator), and Kirsten Trusko (True Course Advisory Services) to discuss Prepaid cards.

Over the last couple of years, I have attended several payments conferences, forums, and breakout sessions geared towards Fintech. Most, if not all, seem to exclude, forget to include, or do not highlight the importance of Prepaid Cards in driving the growth of Fintech’s especially in the payments space.

It must be acknowledged that Prepaid has been around for a while and has established itself as an important payment tool for all consumer segments. It has already gone through the growing pains that the “Fintech” industry is experiencing. And Fintechs are more and more using prepaid as their preferred product to enter the financial services market. For this reason, in June, Mastercard launched a new program called Accelerate designed to support the ambitions of players in the Fintech sector through tailored support arrangements including access to insights, tools, technology and investment to support innovation.

As the global workforce changes and the Gig economy grows, shared economy platforms are providing the perfect opportunity for non-traditional financial services companies to take advantage of prepaid as a platform for innovation. Mastercard has built a Prepaid Gig solution to better solve both the needs of Gig workers and the platforms that employee them. Prepaid can be tailored to many other use cases as well. For example, Digital Payroll cards help workers ensure they receive the full amount of their wages quickly and safely, and help employers satisfy government mandates.

Additionally, now that the regulations issued by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection are in place, we are starting to see a Prepaid renaissance in the marketplace. Traditional financial organizations are partnering with Fintech and other emerging companies to design products that fit the everyday financial needs of Americans. For instance, PayPal and Mastercard have developed a prepaid card which links to a user’s PayPal balance; Green Dot, Apple, and Discover are launching a virtual prepaid card; and, most recently announced, Starbucks, Visa, and Chase are creating a prepaid card linked to Starbucks rewards.

The government takes advantage of the flexibility of the Prepaid platform in any number of Prepaid programs. I think it is important to note that every state in the Union has utilized some form of Prepaid card to disburse a benefit. On the federal level the U.S. Treasury operates (alongside Mastercard, Conduent and Comerica) the wildly successful Direct Express program.

Prepaid is everywhere, yet it is unassuming. Collectively the industry must come together and do a better job of amplifying all the positive changes that Prepaid has been leading over the last 10 years. Prepaid is too bold to stay in the shadows any longer. The time has come to tell our story.

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Written by Brian Tate, NBPCA, & Silvio Piserchia, Mastercard.

The NBPCA is pleased to have ENACOMM as its newest member. ENACOMM provides customer service tools for card programs. We spoke to Michael Boukadakis, ENACOMM’s Chief Executive Officer, via e-mail about the company's business and the future of the prepaid market.

What is your company's role in the prepaid market?
ENACOMM is a FinTech company that provides innovative, interactive and intelligent customer self-service applications and assisted-service solutions to the prepaid market. ENACOMM utilizes web, mobile, SMS texts, email, voice and other communication technology channels to provide customers with a superior, multi-modal self-service experience. ENACOMM’s technologies improve the customer experience, fight financial fraud and increase operational efficiency.

What kinds of prepaid programs do you support?
ENACOMM is a multi-branded, multi-tenant solution supporting many types of cards including Loyalty, General Purpose Reloadable, Payroll, Government Benefits, Gift, Credit, Debit, Charge, ATM, Stored-Value, Fleet, Open-Loop, Closed-Loop and others.

What kinds of special features do your programs offer?
ENACOMM has the products and services organizations need to drive efficiency, provide outstanding customer service and increase profitability. A list of our products includes:

• Hosted IVR, featuring personalized, intelligent customer voice interactions.
• 4Cast, a hosted CRM product that automates intelligent customer interactions, predicts future behavior and conducts targeted messaging campaigns.
• eKBA, mobile “knowledge-based authentication” including automated account activation.
• ViA, a cost-effective, easily-implemented analytics tool for call centers with real-time IVR, CTI and Quality reporting, monitoring, and alerting.
• Fraud Control Module (FCM), ENACOMM's modular application with customizable fraud indicators that integrates with the ViA reporting system.
• Engage, a browser-based console to manage and extend the capabilities of the IVR, unifying interactions across the web, chat, email, fax and voice recognition channels.
• eAlerts, automated outbound calling, SMS texting and emails.
• ENCART, ENACOMM Network Call Allocation Routing Tool.
• Eva, authenticates and protects your customers using voice biometrics.
• Voice eSignature, for legally binding voice biometric signatures.
• VPA, AI-based Conversational Banking with ENACOMM's Virtual Personal Assistant for financial institutions' self-service users.
• VIVR, Visual IVR taking the traditional IVR into the digital arena to deliver rich media content and interaction straight to customer cell phones even while they are on the phone.
• eTDoS Guard, protect your institution against telephony attacks.

What kinds of companies are you looking to partner with?
ENACOMM partners with Financial Institutions, Card Companies, Retailers, Distributors, Marketers, Program Managers and Processors.

What do you think the future of prepaid holds in the next five years?
Prepaid will continue to grow as direct-to-consumer, commercial, and government programs add additional functionality and capabilities for payment. New technologies to increase security and convenience are evolving, making the user experience more secure and seamless. Cardholders want Omni-Channel Support that provides choice, ease, courtesy, security and control, which are all delivered by the ENACOMM Suite of Solutions.

In this episode, the NBPCA examines “The 2016 and 2017 Surveys of Consumer Payment Choice: Summary Results” and considers the results from the perspective of cardholders. We also think about how prepaid providers can improve their business to increase cardholder confidence and thus portfolio profitability.

The survey found that “of all the payment instruments that consumers owned, prepaid cards were used the least frequently.”

The reasons for the low be hinted at by the attitudinal questions the survey asked.

The survey asked users to assess the different payments types on:

• Acceptance
• Acquisition and Set UP
• Convenience
• Cost
• Payment Records
• Security

Respondents rated these aspects on a 1 to 8 scale, with 1 being the best and 8 being the worst.

Prepaid cards did not score a 1 in any of the categories, which means that the industry has some work to do. In this episode, NBPCA relates the experience of another prepaid card user to show where some of the troubles might come from and try to suggest some ways prepaid card providers can stack up favorably against other payment types.

Thank you for listening. Please give us a like and a review on your favorite podcast app and share this show with your friends and colleagues who may be interested. It you have any questions about this or any other topics related to the prepaid industry, contact me at bjackson@nbpca.org.

Listen now.