Mercator Advisory group continues its annual series on market trends in the open-loop prepaid market. Mercator expects a robust environment for the prepaid ecosystem, with the largest segments; general purpose open-loop gift and financial services cards trending strong. Consistent with past years, economic conditions play a large role in the outlook of individual products. Budgetary and inflationary pressure should advance unemployment and benefit cards, and items stressing budgetary constraint, while travel, business cards, and other items representing discretionary spending will have a more negative outlook.

Mercator research indicates American buyers show positive outlook on the prepaid market as a whole, but the benefits will be less visible in open-loop categories. The research highlights healthy spending patterns in prepaid cards as well as frequency of purchases, with ancillary benefits to retailers when consumers spend beyond their card balance, extending revenue opportunities because of the use of a prepaid card.

This report is 26 pages long and has 15 exhibits.

Companies mentioned in this report include: American Express, Green Dot, Greenlight, Mastercard, Netspend, Visa, Walmart, Western Union