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Data for today’s episode is provided by Mercator Advisory Group’s report – North American PaymentsInsights: Prepaid Cards: Shifting Purchase Channels
General Purpose Reloadable Gift Cards Have an Awareness Challenge:
- 19% of consumers currently use General Purpose Reloadable Gift Cards.
- However, 28% of consumers are not even aware that General Purpose Reloadable Gift Cards can be reused by reloading them.
- Even though young adults are the most likely users of reloadable cards, 25% don’t know they exist.
- The inconvenience of reloading the card is the most cited reason for no longer using one, cited by
- 28% of consumers.
- High fees (cited by 24% of consumers) are also a leading cause for abandonment.
- In fact, awareness of how to reload a general purpose reloadable prepaid card is declining across all categories of reload from 2019.
- The top 10 attributes of General Purpose Reloadable Prepaid Card features have fallen in consumer ranking across the board as well.
About Report
Mercator Advisory Group’s most recent Insight Summary Report, Prepaid Cards: Shifting Purchase Channels, from the bi-annual North American PaymentsInsights Survey Series reveals continued growth of reloadable cards in the United States. Furthermore, the purchase channels for many types of prepaid cards (closed-loop gift, open-loop gift, open-loop reloadable, gaming, phone and transit) are also shifting, particularly in the area of online purchasing.
Prepaid Cards: Shifting Purchase Channels, the latest Insight Summary Report from Mercator Advisory Group’s Primary Data Service, is based on a sample of 3,001 U.S. adults surveyed in the annual online Payments survey of Mercator’s North American PaymentsInsights Survey Series, conducted in June 2020.
The study highlights consumers’ use and interest in prepaid cards and, in particular, store cards, general purpose (or open-loop) cards and general purpose reloadable cards. The report explores where consumers buy and redeem prepaid cards, whether the cards are purchased for themselves or as gifts, how the cards are used, sources of funds for the cards, and other key aspects of prepaid cards in consumers’ lives.
“The prepaid market is changing with neo and challenger banks, use of reloadable prepaid cards, and more governments and corporations issuing prepaid cards instead of checks for disbursements of all types. That said, the use of gift cards continues to be strong, particularly online,” stated the author of the report, Peter Reville, director of Primary Data Services at Mercator Advisory Group, which includes the North American PaymentsInsights Survey Series.
