Prepaid Financial Services Announce the Launch of the Camden "Direct Payments" Card

LONDON, February 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Prepaid Financial Services Ltd (London) today announced the successful launch of the initial phase of the provision of Direct Payments by the London Borough of Camden onto a Prepaid MasterCard(R) card. The Direct Payment project has been delivered to evaluate how the utilisation of prepaid cards might deliver more streamlined and cost effective processes for making payments to people who have been assessed as qualifying for social care and support.

Commenting on the launch, Mr. John Stansfield of Camden said, "At Camden we are transforming the way we provide social care and support, by providing personal budgets to our customers, so that they have choice and control over how money is spent to meet their needs. We believe that prepaid cards have the potential to offer an easy-to-use way for customers to access and manage their funds, and an efficient way for the Council to provide and monitor direct payments. While still in the pilot phase of the scheme, initial feedback from customers and staff has been encouraging. Excellent customer support is a key requirement for us, and we were very pleased on that basis to select PFS to work with us on the pilot."

Mr. Noel Moran, CEO of PFS, said, "We are delighted to have delivered this initial project for the London Borough of Camden as we believe this forms a key part of the local government initiatives on Direct Payments, making Direct Payments more cost effective and empowering the stakeholder. At PFS we believe that the provision of payments onto a prepaid MasterCard gives the end user greater control over their spending. We developed specific functionality to meet the needs of Camden, which has resulted in an enhanced product offering for Direct Payment users. We are delighted to provide the customer service, which caters for multiple languages and is based out of our London Office."

Commenting further, Mr Moran said, "The Social Care and Direct Payment initiatives utilising prepaid cards will deliver a more cohesive, streamlined payment mechanism, while also aiding Social inclusion and enabling empowerment of the end client, the direct payment recipient. We are working with a number of Local Authorities on a series of initiatives, including further roll outs of a replacement for the paper based system, which many council's have to use for Direct Payments. PFS deliver a wide range of business solutions including foreign currency cards, money remittance, corporate expenses solutions and benefit payout cards. Our extensive experience in project delivery and prepaid program management along with our outstanding technology platform enables us to win business in a crowded market place."

Matthew Lanford, Head of Prepaid at MasterCard Europe, the payment scheme behind this prepaid programme, commented: "MasterCard is delighted to be part of a programme that will give recipients of social care and support greater freedom of choice, while providing the London Borough of Camden with an efficient mechanism for streamlining their direct payment processes. The public sector is a key growth area for MasterCard Prepaid globally, with recent research conducted by Boston Consulting Group estimating that government spending on prepaid will reach GBP11 billion in the UK alone by 2017. The success of this programme will demonstrate to other local authorities and government bodies how prepaid can deliver cost savings for their own direct payment programmes."

Mr Joel Harris, President of M2 Financial, the processor of the prepaid cards, stated, "This is a great example of the flexibility and use of Prepaid Cards for both public and private sector businesses. PFS has proven itself capable to deliver outstanding technology and business solutions in many sectors and that, allied to the M2 superior leading edge processing platform brings costs savings to businesses and to the consumer. Our partnership with prepaid program managers like PFS is an essential component of the M2 growth strategy in Europe."

About Prepaid Financial Services

PFS is a prepaid Program Manager, headquartered in London, delivering prepaid card programs in many different geographic markets for banks, processors and clients. Founded in 2007 PFS has launched programs for clients including Foreign Currency cards, Money Remittance, Travel, Payroll, Corporate expenses solutions, Commission payouts and Social and Benefit Payments. The flexibility of the scalable PFS Middleware platform and its ability to interface into multiple processors, third parties and vendors allows the Company to be innovative and robust. For more details on PFS you can visit http://www.prepaidfinancialservices.com or contact us direct on +44(0)207-1250321

About Muscato Group

Muscato Group Inc., specializes in developing, and implementing transaction and payment technologies and in licensing and operating its products and services. Muscato has a foundation in several vertical markets, including healthcare and insurance, logistics and financial payments, and a 25-year track record of architecting, developing and implementing highly scalable, flexible transaction processing software that includes the world's most secure e-commerce transaction technology. http://www.M2-corp.com

About Transact Network Ltd.

Transact Network issues the PFS Prepaid MasterCard Card. Transact Network (http://www.transactnetwork.com) is a licensed European E-money institution and a MasterCard(R) principal member. Powering prepaid programs is the company's sole business.