Prepaid cash cards are plastic cards, which fall under the pay first category of plastic payments. It can be used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline system for exchanging of goods and services and even to withdraw money. The users need to top up money into the card before they use it. The amount to be paid will be deducted from the value. Hereby, prepaid cash cards are designed to be used as a safer alternative as compare to cash.
Nowadays people tend to own a prepaid cash card, because there are numerous benefits to the prepaid card:
Remain in control of one’s money, keep track all of activity online or by phone.
Free balance alerts –Some card providers will inform users on how much cash they have.
Eliminate check cashing fees and enjoy immediate access to your money through direct deposit of your paycheck, government payment or other income sources, no bank account needed.
Avoid bounced check fees; always know exactly how much money you have to spend. The prepaid card can help protect you from over spending.
Besides, prepaid cash cards are being convenient for consumer because it can be use in several ways.
Pay bill – Rent, utilities, insurance, car payment, and cell phone bills can be paid instantly.
Shop anywhere as long as the card using is accepted at different retailers, buys fuel at the pump, pay by phone, and shop on the Internet.
Get cash at ATMs, any time of the day, and any day of the week.
Transfer money – For some prepaid cash card they provide the convenient such as send or receive money via bank wire transfers, between two cards.
Pay for toll, or public transport – As an example, Touch’ n Go card in Malaysia. It can be used for paying any toll fee in the city or even highways. Besides, it can be used in some selected parking sites and theme park as well.
Example for prepaid cash card:
Tune Card
The Tune Card is a prepaid Visa card. It’s a reloadable card that allows user to spend only what you have pre-deposited into their account. If they’re not too crazy about debt but don’t relish the thought of carrying around loads of cash, a prepaid card is what they’re looking for.
Touch` n Go
Touch `n Go uses contactless smartcard technology. The card looks similar to a credit card. User can continue using the card as long as it is pre-loaded with electronic cash. User can reload the card at toll plazas, train stations, Automated Teller Machines, Cash Deposit Machines, Petrol kiosks and at authorised third party outlets. Reload denomination is ranging from RM20 to RM500.
Octopus Card
The octopus card one of a very common prepaid cash card which launched in Hong Kong. It launched in September 1997 to collect fares for the territory’s mass transit system, the Octopus card system is the first contactless smart card system in the world and has since grown into a widely used payment system for virtually all public transport in Hong Kong.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored-value_card
https://www.tunemoney.com/
http://www.touchngo.com.my/
http://www.octopuscards.com/
Electronic Currency also known as Electronic Money, Electronic Cash, Digital Money or Digital Cash refer to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. The emerge of electronic currency is because of the Internet and E-Commerce become an increasing commercial area. So that, electronic payment become one of the important feature between customers and sellers. Traditional payment include credit cards, private label debit cards and charge cards. However, problem arise for these traditional form of payment online. First of all, not all merchant acre accept credit card transactions because of service fee for each transaction. In addition, customers have become with “hackers” obtaining their credit card number stored on the Internet and become the victim of fraud. As a result, electronic currency are receiving attention from both customers and merchants.
How Electronic Currency Works?
Electronic currency is a system that allows a person to pay for goods or services by transmitting a number from one computer to another. The transaction is carry out electronically by transferring funds from one party to another by either debit or credit. This system can eliminate the payment risk because the money are instantly cleared and secured by using strong encryption. Thus, electronic currency is the digital representation of money or digital representation of currency.
Advantages of Electronic Currency
CONFIDENTIALITY
One of the attractive features of electronic currency is, unlike real cash, it is anonymous. That means when electronic currency is sent from a customer to merchant, there is no way to obtain information about customers. This is one of the significant differences between electronic currency and credit card. Credit card companies will collect a customer’s spending habits and sell this data to third party and the bank will not have record of customer involved in the electronic currency transaction. Thus, the bank is unable to obtain personal information about customers and protects against the privacy rights of the customer.
SECURITY
The electronic currency is provided by the use of encryption to security purpose.
Disadvantages of Electronic Currency
FRAUD
Major disadvantage to electronic currency is fraud. If customer misplace this private key and a perpetrator uses it to withdraw fund, the bank would never know and the customer will liable to the lost. Credit card can limit the customer’s liability for unauthorized activity. In addition, if the security code is broken and the message is intercepted, the hacker will be able to perpetrate the fraud on the recipient of the message.
PEER-TO-PEER DOUBLE SPENDING
Another disadvantage of electronic currency is double spending of digital coins. This is potential to happen when customer chooses a peer-to-peer transaction. In the electronic currency system, the bank able to check the serial number of each coin in a transaction against its database of spent coins, if the coin has been spent, the transaction will be denied.
For nowadays, there are many convenience methods for us to paying. Credit is one of the method. Many people are like to pay by credit card; it is because the users are not need to really pay with their money at the moment. The credit card’s company will sent a statement to the users at the end of a month. The statement is stated the amount that the users has to paid. The users must pay the amount without over the expired date. Other wives, penalties and interest will be charged by credit card’s company.
There are many reasons for cause credit card debts. The first reason is the people are always belief about their future earning. When the users paying by the credit card, they will think that they may pay the amount in the end of the month, so that they may use their following salary to pay. This is the reason for causes the debt. The users cannot expect what they have to spend at next month, if there is some extra spending on next month, they will do not have enough money to pay the credit card’s debt. The second reason is most of the users do not have their financial planning. By doing a financing planning it may help the users to be more understand about their current cash that they may use. By understanding the financial situation, it may be easier to control the spending. The next reason is the credit is easy to be use and access. What is the procedure for using credit card? It is very simple only. When you decide to buy something, you just need to take the product to the counter than and give your credit to the person that at the counter, after that you may take the product back to your home. It is because the credit card is too convenience, it cause many users using it without consideration. And the last reason is the people of nowadays is easy to get attract by the new product. There are many new products are present on the market everyday. And the consumers especially the teenagers are easy to get attract by these product and purchase without thinking with their financial situation.
Although there are many reason for causes the credit card’s debt, but it also can be avoid. The first solution is education. By reduce the people of having credit card’s debt, education is very important. The government has to give the education to its people for how to manage themselves for escape from the debts. Besides that, the users have to do their own financing planning and clearly understand with their financial situation, and avoid them for spending the money without consideration. And the next solution is the users are encourages to set a credit card limit that under their financial ability. For example, An user’s salary is about RM3,000. If him set his limit at RM10,000 it will be increase the probability of the user to spent more. Lastly, the user may have to pay the credit card’s outstanding amount before the due day and make them escape from getting penalty or interest charge.
The credit card’s users are encourages to be consume smart. It is no point for having a heavy debt in your life.
In the 21st century,we are in the midst of a payment resolution which with cards and electronic payments taking the place of cash and checks.
Mobile payments which also known as mobile web payments or WAP billing, is a
collection of money from consumer via a mobile device such as their mobile phone, Smartphone, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) or any other devices that are related to electronic. With such application, it can brings advantages to the world of e-commerce and it’s relatively growing in Malaysia as well.
This service was 1st introduced in Malaysia by TeleMoney, the country's first mobile payment service via multi-channel access for Internet and wireless transactions and it was l
aunched on 20 November 2001. Besides that, there are also another service provider which is Mobile Money (MM Wallet) is also one of the mobile payment systems that has been introduced in Malaysia few years ago.
The mobile payment can be used to purchase any number of digital goods and physical goods. For example digital goods are ringtones, games, wallpaper for mobile phone and the booking cinema ticket and air ticket such as Golden Screen Cinema and Airasia.Usually purchase digital good are through by SMS based transaction payments or mobile web payment(WAP).
The mobile payment providers still have a large market share to be grab on. This mobile payment is still new and has potential to continue to grow as consumer’s confidence on mobile payment increased. For those customer whom are working till late night may dun have the time to pay their bills. So that mobile payment will be very convenient for them.
There are a few strategy to adopt consumers which is to educate them about mobile payments, and how to use and introduce its functions (e.g. bill payment, mobile purchase). In other way, it is also very important to enhance the security well and make them to feel confident through the mobile payment. Besides that, most of the company will reward their consumer by giving gift at certain level of purchasing or giving redemption of rewards. In addition, some of the company will give extra credit to customers such as Hotlink users. With certain call and receive will accumulated the points to redeem air talk time or sms.
Prepaid cash cards are plastic cards, which fall under the pay first category of plastic payments. It can be used to transfer electronic payments in online or offline system for exchanging of goods and services and even to withdraw money. The users need to top up money into the card before they use it. The amount to be paid will be deducted from the value. Hereby, prepaid cash cards are designed to be used as a safer alternative as compare to cash.
