MALL CARDS

Mall cards offer an electronic alternative for shopping malls to replace their existing paper-based gift certificate programs.

Program Description:
The mall stored value product is a prepaid card that displays a mall name or logo. The card can be issued in bulk with predefined value or unique value. The mall card is designed for a closed system and can only be used for payments of goods or services with those merchants who participate in the program. The card is activated by the participating mall at the time of purchase and can be used until the card expires or the funds are fully depleted.

Transactions on stored-value cards, the fastest-growing area of the payment card industry, will total USD 43 billion by 2005, according to Killen & Associates, largely due to low-risk and cost-efficient propositions. Since stored-value transactions run on current POS terminals, and are processed on the same networks, merchants and issuers can achieve solid profit margins by ‘piggybacking’ stored-value on their systems. Gift cards, which grew 20 percent in 2002, to USD 38 billion, are also driving stored-value cards, which Bain & Co predicts to reach 2 to 4 percent of all retail consumer spending within the next decade