Rev-ing Electronic Payments for the Unbanked

March 23, 2010

Rev Worldwide, a global payments company specializing in technologies that enable banks and other organizations to reach financially-underserved markets, is setting up shop in the U.S. following a string of successful initiatives in Europe and India.

Operating from offices in Austin, Texas, Rev plans to develop, operate and market integrated prepaid card and mobile payments programs, working with partners in financial services, telecommunications and retailing, throughout the U.S. and Canada.

"With Rev Worldwide, we set out to build a company that could help partners access new markets and customers access the opportunities that come with participating in the financial mainstream," said Roy Sosa, Rev's CEO. "It's clear from Rev's swift progress that the opportunity it has to accomplish that goal is real and rapidly growing," he added.

Sosa and his brother, Bertrand Sosa, President of Rev's North American operations, aren't strangers to the prepaid card space, even though Rev has been around for just 2 years.

The Sosa's founded NetSpend in 1999, the oldest prepaid card company in the U.S., and put up much of the money for this project as partners in MPOWER Ventures, an Austin-based R&D incubator that invests in projects that promote financial inclusiveness.

Cashing in on Promise of Prepaid

Last year, Rev was behind the debut of prepaid debit cards in worn-torn Kosovo that unbanked Kosovars can now use to send money domestically, top up mobile phone cards and check account balances simply by texting; no bank accounts required.

Rev also introduced the first prepaid card to support domestic money transfers using mobile phones in Romania, last year. And in India, the company rolled out the first internationally-branded payment card issued outside a bank, using a MasterCard virtual card issuing product.

"These early wins underscore the power we see in the combination of prepaid cards and mobile phones not only to provide a safe, affordable and convenient home for consumers' funds, but also to overcome historical impediments to delivering financial services in hard-to-reach markets where they're most needed," Rosa said.

Sosa added, "With this model in place insuch diverse parts of the world, we believe it has as much power to accelerate the expansion of financial services at home as wel as elsewhere in the world."

Roughly one in four U.S. households is considered underserved by mainstream financial institutions, according to the FDIC. In Mexico, Rev estimates three out of four households have no basic checking accounts.

Prepaid cards are a huge and growing market, and not just for the unbanked. In 2008, just 17% of U.S. consumers used prepaid debit cards, loading almost $248 billion onto those cards, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's most recent consumer research. Merator Advisory Group in Boston forecasts that number will more than double to $525.8 billion in 2012.,

Fewer than 2% of the world's poor have access to financial services other than those provided by unregulated moneylenders.