Change Financial and Mastercard to issue payment cards in New Zealand
- September 21, 2022
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Change Financial has been granted Mastercard Principal issuer License for Prepaid cards in New Zealand
Being a Mastercard Principal Issuer allows Change to deliver card programs to banks, credit unions, fintechs and other businesses. looking to offer digital and physical card payments to their customers. Just like ANZ Debit cards, businesses would be able use prepaid and debit cards for digital and physical transactions.
Change CEO, Alastair Wilkie commented, “We are excited to be a Mastercard Principal Issuer in New Zealand for Prepaid and Debit cards. To be granted our licence less than 6 months after our Mastercard partnership announcement is a wonderful result for both parties.”
Change Financial uses innovative and scalable technology solutions to provide tailored payment solutions, card issuing and testing to banks and fintechs. The company manages and processes more than 16 million virtual, credit, debit and prepaid cards worldwide. Change’s payments technology and management services are used by over 147 clients in 41 countries. Clients include BDO Unibank, ME Bank and eftpos Australia.
The new capability will allow to lower the barrier of entry for New Zealand banks, credit unions, fintechs and business to deliver innovative card solutions to their customers. More than 35,000 debit cards will be issued on the Mastercard network and processed through Change’s Vertexon platform.
New Zealand card solutions landscape has been lacking innovative prepaid card products specially for international travel with bank and transaction fees hurting SMEs.
Demand for digital and physical card payments capabilities in New Zealand is set to rise as their e-commerce market is projected to grow 38 percent between now and 2025, reaching $8.8 billion (USD), according to the March 2022 Global Payments Report. The report reveals buy now, pay later (BNPL) is the fastest growing online payment method and set to account for 17 percent of e-commerce transaction value by 2025.
