Cards for Teens from Plastyc's UPside Prepaid Visa Debit Card
We met recently with Patrice Peyret, CEO of Plastyc, the provider of the UPside prepaid Visa debit card designed specifically for teens. Patrice is a serial entrepreneur who's been involved in a number of innovations over the years - ranging from payment card technologies to mobile applications.
His latest venture, Plastyc, is focused on serving the payment needs of that "unbanked" segment which actually has huge spending power: America's teens. He launched the UPside Visa card for teens and students in December after raising outside capital from angel investors and has been gradually ramping the business through very targeted marketing to teens and their parents.
The UPside Visa card solution addresses the teen's need to have in their pocket a card they can use with confidence to buy at their favorite merchants while providing parents with the ability to instantly or periodically (think allowance) fund to their teen's account. Using the teen's mobile phone, they can instantly check their available balance - knowing with confidence there's enough on hand to buy those clothes they've just selected at Hollister.
Others have attempted to target this market before - perhaps, most notably, Visa with its Visa Buxx program. Peyret has studied those earlier efforts very carefully, conducting a lot of consumer (parent and teen) research as he crafted the design of UPside. The result is a product that's clearly differentiated from earlier efforts and very focused on the needs of the joint teen/parent market.
For more information, see both the Plastyc website - it describes a bit more about the company - along with the UPside Visa website - which is focused on the value propositions for both teens and parents.
I'm suprised you did not bring up PAYjr. They have actually been gaining a lot of traction lately; I know many of the banks that I speak with on a daily basis are working with them on a teen program and I've seen them in the press a lot lately as well.
Posted by: Mark Johnson | March 06, 2007 at 06:19 PM