While broad-based consumer prepaid and charge cards generally offer consumers an alternative payment method, corporate needs and interests are different. Companies are not so much interested in developing alternative payment methods but improving administrative practices to save time and money.

Commercial prepaid programmes can offer a number of advantages to a company, its employees and customers.

Beyond the administrative efficiencies, innovative use of prepaid applications can help strengthen a company’s brand and image through prepaid solutions that reinforce security, ease of use and broad acceptance among employees, business customers and consumers.

Examining the requirements of large companies has particular relevance in considering the commercial opportunities for prepaid products. Prepaid solutions address the efficiency concerns of large companies and, more importantly, will be considered as part of their overall payment solution requirements. Large companies are increasingly working with their commercial banking partners to create operational efficiencies through payments technologies. We can expect that companies will add prepaid requirements to their tender solicitations for broader payment solutions. Prepaid applications will be added to requirements that now include corporate Travel and Entertainment (TE) cards, lodged accounts and purchasing cards. These companies will continue an important trend toward “one-stop shopping” to meet their payment product needs.

Understanding this trend is critical in terms of meeting the needs of large customers – customers that can generate the recurring large volumes under long-term contracts that produce business annuity.

With the growth and benefits to be derived through prepaid cards, companies will most certainly come to expect that their commercial banking relationships include a prepaid card component among the various card and payment services to be supported. Domestic operations of multinational companies, in Europe and around the world, will be subject to the increasing centralisation of payment options and sourcing.

Another important underlying factor in Europe is the advanced state of the chip card environment. Many prepaid solutions, or sponsors of prepaid solutions, will seek integration with other payment options. The multi-application and variable capabilities of chip card technology will help create a receptive infrastructure environment for prepaid –
an environment far more advanced in Europe than in other parts of the world.

These trends, coupled with increasing pressures for greater efficiency and the need to build strong employee and customer relationships, will continue to encourage the growth of commercial prepaid programmes.

While the range of prepaid applications is considerable, there are clear factors that will drive commercial adoption of prepaid card applications. These factors differ from consumer payments in that they focus primarily on administrative efficiencies and, secondly, on strengthening company relationships among employees and customers.

At Airmax we aim respond to the particular needs of businesses, and learn to integrate these solutions with the broader demands of integrated payment solutions, we hope to be best positioned to realise the very substantial opportunities in this important area of growth for the payments industry.

Airmax benchmarking for service offing

• Allow open and close loop cards to be used for all purchases at service stations and elsewhere, either by category or business type. This will enable purchase of bunkered fuel where approved.
• Build in affiliate wallets with brand accounts either by function, approved service provider and rewards.
• Capture mileage and registration number and Driver ID where possible.
• Build in configurable auto top-up functionally for management of all cards and fund distribution.
• Ensure all cards come with a PIN as standard and can be instantly stopped by the fleet manager with either real-time web controls or SMS blocking.
• Enable fleet managers to control their vehicles through fuel type, fuel price or volume restrictions.
• Issue line by line invoice summaries segmented by card, vehicle, driver, cost centre and location.
• Ensure the reporting of VAT with HMRC approval.
• Offer distinctions between business and private mileage capture.
• Offer users access to management reports and invoices through an online platform and archiving through a central depositary.
• Highlight exception reporting and KPI alerts through emphasising how the services can reduce internal abuse.
• Promote the ability to set pricing strategies through restricting card use by fuel brand, or outlets.
• Introduce innovative additional services and features such as iPhone apps and payment for parking, tolling, congestion charging and zone payments as well as online tools including exception reporting.
• Build in multi currency converters.
• Consider emissions reporting to pre-empt the introduction of more stringent European Union (EU) laws regarding CO2 taxation on larger companies.
• Introduce text message alerts for fleet managers advising of exceptional purchases or price changes when away from the workplace.
• Make key information such as network acceptance, services, and features, as well as pricing structure readily available to customers online.
• Offer promotional channels such as at the pump, at the point of sale, or through B2C loyalty and reward cards.
• Integrate data from telematics systems to show impact of fuel measurements with fuel payment
• Empower the fleet manager or the fleet accountant to run his own payment card back office with adequate tools.
• Integration of expense management reports into pending, approval and paid status as an auto system with feeds into accounts packages.
• Offer route optimisation for fleets to minimise and improve fuel efficiencies.

Airmax’s Merchant Management System (MMS) is an online service portal thatprovides various functions involved in creating and managing the accounts of cardholders. Each Affiliate who is given access to MMS will be given a Super Admin Merchant Account. Each merchant account may possess one or more Branches which are governed by the amount of Bins/sub bins under each Super Admin Merchant account. Each Branch is therefore supported by a virtual card that starts with 7 independently; we call this the Master Merchant Account (MMA). When funds are sent to your designated funding account, those funds will be realized via the Branch. You will see your current balance within MMS Branch on the top right corner after you login with your correct Branch credentials. You will not be able to transfer funds to your card base without pre-funding your Branch Account.

Each Programme Manager of Airmax Scope (AMS) will have access inside the MMS system. The extent of their access within the system shall be determined by AMS.  

Airmax Scope’s Merchant Management System is capable of the following:

Card functions:

• Search Card
• Card Registration
• Card Balance
• Card Loading
• POS Terminal
• Card Profile
• Card Status
• Card Pin Reset
• Customer Alerts

Batch Load Services: (Added Services)

• Upload Card Load Batch file
• List Card Load Batches
• Add Card Load Batch
• Upload TopUp Batch file
• List TopUp Batches
• Add TopUp Batch
• Upload Card Issue File
• List Card Issue File

KYC Functions

• Upload Cardholder Documents
• Upload Documents in Batch

Merchant Settings

• List Branches
• Add Branch

Users and Groups

• List Groups
• Add Groups
• List Users
• Add Users
• Edit Account

Reports

• CardLoad Batch Report
• List TopUp Batches
• Card Loading Report
• Card Registration Report
• Transaction Summary Report

MMS screen shot examples

Search Card
Search card allows the operator to search for a card without having the entire card number. This feature is normally only turned on for Administrators in order to help Customer Service in the event of a lost or stolen card that needs to be closed. This feature only works on specific platforms.

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Card Registration
Click on Card Functions, click on Card Registration on the left side of your screen.  Card registration within MMS is used for Merchants that carry an inventory of cards ready to be issued without the embossing of the customer’s name. You will be required to enter the customer’s information along with a card number retrieved from your inventory. Once the customer changes their PIN in the Card Holder Portal (CHP) they will have activated their card, and will be ready for use.

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Transaction Summary Report
The Transaction Summary Report shows all activity that has occurred on your MMA. By Selecting a Branch and a date range, you will see all debits and credits occuring on your MMA.  This will include card loads from the MMA as well as Bank loads to your MMA for card funding.

 
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AIRMAX SCOPE generates immediate reports for every transaction created within the system.

For further information email d.amin@airmaxgroup.com