Thailand’s Payment Solution Chooses WAY4 for New Prepaid and Co-Branded Card Business
The Customer
Capital OK Company Limited was established in 2003 by a joint venture between DBS Bank and Shin Corporation Public Company Limited. Capital OK provides Thai consumers with a range of personal loans, revolving credit facilities and credit cards.
In January 2005, Capital OK formed Payment Solution to develop a prepaid cards portfolio. Payment Solution developed a range of prepaid cards to be sold at retail outlets as Visa or MasterCard-branded OK Cash Cards or as co-branded cards such as the MU Card aimed at Thai fans of the Manchester United Football Club. Prepaid cards can be used to pay for goods, transfer money from one card to another, and mobile phone top-ups. The cards are aimed at people who want the convenience of a credit card but do not yet qualify, for example, students and teenagers.
Business Challenges
Payment Solution was looking for a flexible processing platform to manage the issuing and acquiring of pre-paid cash and co-branded cards. In a rapidly growing market where prepaid products are becoming increasingly popular, it was particularly important to choose a platform that could cope with high transaction volumes. Other items on Payment Solution’s wish list for an ideal processing system included the ability to:
Develop new prepaid card products and services quickly
Start point-of-sale acquiring
Run loyalty programmes
Set up a General Ledger accounting structure
Offer P2P funds transfers
Provide an interface with an IVR web channel
Provide an interface with the Visa and MasterCard payment systems
Integrate with the processing centres of more than 7 banks
Integrate with telcos (billing systems of mobile phone operators)
Control IT development and management costs
WAY4 Platform
Payment Solution chose WAY4 Prepaid and WAY4 Loyalty Switch & CMS to run its profitable prepaid cash and co-branded cards business.
WAY4 provided Payment Solution with the following business features:
Flexible issuing, acquiring and clearing business engine
Product and transaction framework - Payment Solutions created more than 30 different prepaid and loyalty products and services on the WAY4 platform
Comprehensive product and transaction management
Flexible account management
EMV and contactless options
Interfaces with banks and telcos
Interfaces with international payment schemes
The company was impressed with WAY4's flexibility and the speed with which it could set up new products and features.
Project Stages
The new WAY4 card management and transaction processing system was implemented in just 5 months and involved the following stages:
In May 2005 an analysis was carried out of the business processes and the necessary interfaces needed for smooth interaction between the processing centres of seven of Thailand’s banks.
The new processing system was configured and implemented on the WAY4 platform in June.
A local pilot project was up and running by July.
Payment Solution’s new processing system was certified by both Visa and MasterCard in August.
The co-branded prepaid and co-branded credit card issuing and acquiring system was fully operational in September 2005.
The Results
OpenWay’s WAY4 solution was delivered on time and within budget.
The fact that Payment Solution was running a new payments processing system within just 5 months, then went on to sell more than 500,000 co-branded prepaid cards in the six months leading up to April 2006, makes this one of the most successful projects of its kind in the payments industry. This phenomenal success was made possible through close cooperation between Payment Solution’s professional marketing team and OpenWay, along with the unsurpassed functionality available on WAY4.
Today, the project covers seven banks, more than 160 merchants, 600 POS terminals, and 500,000 cards. Payment Solution’s merchant partners include Major Cineplex Group, Barclaycard (with the Manchester United co-branded card), Central Plaza and Slim Club. Payment Solution planned to sell 1 million co-branded prepaid cards by the end of 2006.