Intercontinental Plc to deploy 50,000 prepaid MasterCards in Nigeria

Lagos - One of the nation's leading financial institutions, Intercontinental Bank Plc, has said it is deploying 50,000 prepaid MasterCards before the end of 2007, an electronic payment solution that will give Nigerians travelling abroad to get easy access to the bank's services wherever they are.
This is coming as the firm said it has already issued an estimated 20,000 MasterCards in Nigeria.

The Group Executive Director, Intercontinental Direct Card Services, Mrs Uchenna Okwodu, revealed this at the media launch of the firm's prepaid MasterCard in Lagos.

She said that presently the prepaid MasterCards come in two denominations, namely the US$100 and US$200 cards respectively.

No account necessary

Okwodu also said that the electronic payment cards could be obtained over the counter at any of its branches countrywide at an additional cost of US$25 per denomination. She said that the product could be acquired without the customer having an account with the bank.

She explained that it would enable Nigerian short time travellers to make purchase at any place in the world as well as reload at will. "This prepaid MasterCard is very good for Nigerians and those studying abroad," she declared, thus guardians of those schooling could reload their cards within a short notice.

"Our bank, Intercontinental is the first bank to introduce this in order to make its customer feel at home and better as well as at ease in moving around, mostly when they have to make purchase abroad," Okwodu declared.

As said by her, prior to now, getting any electronic payment card takes up to five days, but with the technology available to the bank and its partner, MasterCard, "this prepaid product was developed and could be acquired in matters of few hours."

Simple registration

However, she stressed that all that is required of customers is "to fill our form, submit passport photograph with identification." Okwodu further said that the bank has two other denominations, including US$1000 and US$2000 adding that this would require a nametag to be imprinted on the card and could take about three days to accomplish.

Okwodu also explained that each prepaid card issued is registered at the branch of issue and head office card centre.
"Only minimal personal information would be requested as required by MasterCard "Know Your Customer-(KYC) theory," she said.

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