Mercator Advisory Group continues its annual series on market trends with a focus on the commercial prepaid market. Mercator generally expects a positive environment for commercial closed-loop cards with steady growth in non-governmental aspects and more robust growth in government closed-loop programs. In addition, budgetary and inflationary pressure should benefit Incentive programs, while those factors, plus a return to in-store shopping, will help store credits and returns.

Open-loop commercial products will see some stagnation in the short term before recovering. The leading cause of the short-term issues will be the end of the Economic Impact Payments (EIP), a vital element of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the long-term outlook will grow strongly in open-loop with the return to corporate use of open-loop products for expense, event, and incentive programs.

Key questions discussed in this report: