Edo Interactive has launched the Facecard Prepaid MasterCard, giving teenagers and young adults a new way to spend money and retailers a new way to market to this audience.
The Facecard is a general purpose debit card that consumers sign up for online at www.facecard.com. Funds can be loaded onto the card via reoccurring direct payments from a bank — a parent, for example, could use this option for a child’s allowance — or from other debit or credit cards and payroll direct deposit.
“This is a non-traditional bank product that is more geared toward leveraging the technology [including Internet and gift cards] that the target market is used to,” said Ed Braswell, president and CEO of Edo Interactive.
A debit card that family members can load money onto as a gift is a “more useful and beneficial” alternative, Braswell said, to gift cards that may go unused because they don’t fit a teenager’s interests.
The Web-based platform supporting these consumer offerings also provides the Facecard with some interesting applications for retailers.
One of these is called Prewards. Merchants can create their own campaigns built around an offer to load a specific dollar amount onto a card member’s card, set limitations for redemption and communicate the offer via e-mail or text message. Offers can be targeted by gender, area code, ZIP code and spending habits.
For example, an electronics merchant might send an e-mail message to male shoppers in areas near its stores, offering $5 on their cards that is only redeemable in-store within 48 hours.
For merchants, a frequency program lets them automatically reward customers with money on their cards when they spend a certain amount within a specific time period. Merchants can also tap the Facecard customer database for surveys and include an offer to load money onto their cards once the survey is completed.
The card was launched mid-May. It is being promoted on MySpace and Facebook, as well as at several large summer concert festivals and on 52 college campuses nationwide.
