SÃO PAULO & MUMBAI, India--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As patron and founder member of the Prepaid International Forum (PIF), TSYS today reported the increasing momentum of the PIF Brazil and India chapters following the successful engagement of members from both chapters via live video conference, marking the first formal exchange on prepaid best practices, legislation and business models between Brazil and India.



Launched in April 2009, the PIF Brazil chapter brings together a diverse member base including payment schemes, issuers, law firms, consultants and distributors, whose key objective is to work together in order to actively develop the prepaid market. The PIF India chapter, launched in August 2009, also has a broad member base drawn from public sector, private sector and multinational banks in addition to global and national payment schemes.



During the 60-minute video conference, members of both chapters engaged in an interactive dialogue with questions and answers posed by both chapters. Brazil and India are rapidly developing markets with large populations1 and both chapters agreed that prepaid has a major role to play in serving the unbanked and underbanked.



“It is anticipated that the mobile phone will play an important role in the Indian payment market. With just 150 million mobile subscribers in 2007, there was a jump to 250 million subscribers in 2008 and more than 500 million subscribers in 2009 with mobile adoption continuing to grow. The mobile phone system works well because around 95% of subscribers are prepaid and users are now experienced with the concept of prepaid,” said Amit Sethi, managing director of India and South Asia, TSYS; vice chairman, PIF India.



Participants also discussed the enormous potential for prepaid to facilitate “social inclusion” in both countries. Prepaid offers a secure, low cost medium for governments to distribute social benefits such as ‘Bolsa Familia’ in Brazil or public distribution of funds and essentials, and government benefits like pensions and disaster reliefs, scholarships and education subsidies in India.



Under the patronage of TSYS, both PIF chapters are working to build customer awareness, drive the adoption of prepaid, identify the business case for prepaid and help understand how to create robust and profitable business models, developing strategies to mitigate risk and adverse publicity, and realizing the mobile and contactless opportunity.



“The exchange of knowledge and best practices between two relatively similar economies can be seen as the first step to driving prepaid market growth for the benefit of all stakeholders. Despite some differences, Brazil and India face very similar challenges and opportunities,” said Antonio Jorge (AJ) de Castro Bueno, business development director for Brazil, TSYS; vice chairman, PIF Brazil.



TSYS is a market leader in prepaid processing and has more than 10 years experience of providing prepaid processing solutions in a licensing and processing capacity. TSYS’ global footprint extends to more than 300 clients across 75 countries and is supported by more than 7,600 team members.  

About PIF

Prepaid International Forum (PIF) is a global not-for-profit trade association established to represent all parties participating on a commercial basis in the prepaid economy. It acts as principal point of liaison between the prepaid economy and government agencies, regulators, consumer bodies and the media.

Since its establishment in June 2007, the Prepaid International Forum has grown rapidly and now has a global membership of over fifty issuers, vendors and programme managers involved in the prepaid industry. In late 2007, PIF established an Australia & New Zealand Chapter, reflecting a rapid growth and interest in prepaid payment facilities in the two countries. PIF Brazil launched in April 2009 and PIF India launched in August 2009.

For more information, contact Diane Brocklebank, Head of Member Relations, Prepaid International Forum, +44 (0) 20 3008 8423 or log on www.prepaidforum.org.

 

About TSYS

TSYS (NYSE: TSS) is one of the world’s largest companies for outsourced payment services, offering a broad range of issuer- and acquirer-processing technologies that support consumer-finance, credit, debit, debt management, healthcare, loyalty and prepaid services for financial institutions and retail companies in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions. For more information contact news@tsys.com or log on to www.tsys.com. TSYS routinely posts all important information on its website.

¹ Brazil 198 million, 1.16 bn India, CIA World Fact book





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