Yes Bank, India’s 5th largest private sector bank, today announced that it has become the largest issuer of Virtual Prepaid Cards in the World on the MasterCard Platform. The number of virtual prepaid cards issued on this platform has crossed 17 lakh users in just a matter of 12 weeks since launch in Jan, 2016. YES Bank has partnered with FreeCharge for issuance of Virtual Prepaid Cards.
The Virtual Prepaid Card which was launched by Yes Bank on the MasterCard platform in partnership with Singapore based Matchmove, allows customers who do not own credit cards or even online banking facilities, to immediately start making purchases online or in-app by linking to a prepaid wallet. The Virtual Prepaid Card which can be generated at the click of a button, removes the limitations of Wallet integration with merchants and allows wallet users to perform transactions at all online merchants on the MasterCard platform.
Ritesh Pai, Senior President and Country Head – Digital Banking, YES BANK, said “We are extremely thrilled with the tremendous response to the Virtual Prepaid Card launched by YES BANK in partnership with MasterCard. The fact that this is the largest such program in the World is a testimony to our focus on leveraging Innovation and Technology to provide a hassle free payment experience across to unbanked and uncarded customers who were hitherto unable to make online payment transactions.”
Digital wallets are emerging as a convenient and secure mode of payments among consumers in tandem with smartphone adoption and rise in the number of internet users. Consumers are now increasingly adopting digital wallets as its utility has been expanded beyond just paying bills and enabling hassle-free payments from anywhere. We are happy to partner with YES BANK and Freecharge to launch the FreeCharge Go MasterCard. Though only recently launched, this program is now one of MasterCard’s largest virtual card program in the world. This entire payment experience has seen huge adoptions from Consumers across the board. Partnerships among innovative companies like Yes Bank, FreeCharge and MasterCard help us to pursue a shared dream of driving the country towards a digital future,” said Porush Singh, Country Corporate Officer, India and Division President, South Asia, MasterCard.
CEO of MatchMove Shailesh Naik said ” The success of this program shows that positive disruption and technology-led evolution that benefits the end consumer is very possible in the banking world when you have strategic, market-movers like YES BANK. YES BANK and Freecharge selected MatchMove as their trusted technology partner to execute the challenging but important task of bringing millions of mobile users into the internet economy – rapidly, safely, and easily. The combination of YES BANK’s superior banking expertise with our proven technology and Freecharge’s immense market reach has already resulted in the one of largest mobile payments programs in South and East Asia, and is certainly one of the fastest growing in the world. And we have only just got started.”
The Virtual Prepaid card issued by YES BANK has garnered tremendous transaction in a short amount of time and is currently seeing close to 15,000 new virtual cards being generated daily. The user adoption has also been quite high with over 5,000 transactions daily with an average ticket size of INR 350 per transaction.