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MasterCard Worldwide said Thursday that Swiss Bankers Prepaid Services Ltd., which already uses MasterCard to process its debit payments, will upgrade to MasterCard's Integrated Processing Solutions system in the spring. The Zurich-based company issues MasterCard-branded prepaid cards in multiple currencies, which can be used like travelers checks. "Prepaid is a critical category for us," Laura Kelly, MasterCard senior vice president and head of global prepaid solutions, tells CardLine Global sister publication American Banker. IPS "allows us to tie together a processing brand solution in a way that allows customers to get up more rapidly and more cost-effectively than if they tried to do that from two different places." The agreement enables MasterCard to hone it processing abilities for chip-embedded cards, Kelly says. Launched in April, IPS is a single processing system that handles signature debit, PIN debit, prepaid, and ATM transactions, MasterCard says. The upgrade signals that MasterCard "is expanding its global platform outside of the U.S. in hopes of gaining some traction for its processing capability in Europe," Adil Moussa, an analyst with United States-based Aite Group, tells CardLine Global. "We are seeing a focus of the card networks on the processing capabilities … in order to differentiate themselves from [one another]. This focus will also lead to an extra source of income for MasterCard."
