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The Question
U.S. payments are going green! OK, technically, they’ve been green for a while, but many consumers now forgo cash in favor of more eco-friendly options, such as paperless bill pay and mobile wallets. In honor of Earth Day 2011, PYMNTS.com asks: Who Is Driving Innovation in “Green” Payment Methods?
Your Answers
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WiGime.com
Posted by john, 23/05/2011 5:28pm (12 months ago)
Green (Dot?) Day: Prepaid payments reduce friction and enable economic progress
Governments and employers have traditionally spent $ millions to disburse payroll and benefit checks in a costly process that requires downstream recipients to engage in more costly processes to convert that paper to electronic formats. On this Earth Day, prepaid programs are replacing costly paper and enabling frictionless progress in electronic commerce with general purpose reloadable prepaid products such as:
Payroll: Prepaid programs provide a way for companies to pay employees directly, swiftly, fairly, and economically with an access vehicle that gives consumers without ready deposit accounts a way to hold and track funds while accessing the benefits of electronic payments
Government Disbursement: On the state and federal level, both in the United States and increasingly in international markets, prepaid products have seen high utility as a way for state agencies to distribute funds to beneficiaries in a way that is swift, secure, leaves an audit trail for taxpayer reconciliation, and provides for acceptance controls to ensure, as in the case of food programs, that the funds loaded on the product are being used as and where intended
For consumers who have depended upon moving through an increasingly electronic world of commerce with cumbersome cash, prepaid cards are reducing costs, accelerating funds availability, and eliminating the friction in commerce. On this Earth Day, that sounds like the best kind of progress.
Posted by Tim Attinger, 20/04/2011 2:19pm (1 year ago)
Don’t go Postal, go social!
Nearly 3 billion pieces of mail hawking credit card offers were sent via the U.S. mail in 2010. This is down from the 6 billion pieces sent in 2004 but up significantly from the 1.4 billion pieces mailed in 2009. Clearly, we are heading in the wrong direction! It used to be that snail mail was the only way to make people aware of such offers, but now, there are many more cost effective ways to do that, which have the added advantage of preserving trees. Social networks, aka Facebook, is one such channel. Issuers are just beginning to get their footing in this dynamic new medium, and it offers opportunities for consumer and issuer interaction on a whole new level. The trick, not to be underestimated, is not using Facebook as another way to spam or “sell” but to engage and create advocates for offers and brands. It is certainly a lot harder than popping off a form letter and sticking it in the mail, but the potential to use this channel to both go green to make more green (profits that is) is hard to ignore.
Posted by Karen Webster, 20/04/2011 1:31pm (1 year ago)
Have you ever thought about the hidden costs of moving around physical cash...especially coins? Probably not. But some experts in the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Banks around the world have looked at that very question. Cash handling is expensive. Producing and transporting physical paper and metal coin currency has a significant impact on the environment, especially since coins use copper and nickel alloys that are in high demand for other purposes. Central Banks and other players in Europe have gone so far as to announce a War on Cash. Sweden has even introduced lighter weight coins and new banknotes that have a lower environmental impact. However, one even simpler way to reduce the environmental impact is to use electronic payments instead of cash.
Posted by Margaret Weichert, 20/04/2011 12:45pm (1 year ago)
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