First Data report: Closed-Loop prepaid cards show strong November volume
Atlanta -- First Data Corp. reported Wednesday that dollar volume growth of prepaid card activations was 8.6% in November, a significant increase over November 2009, when activations declined -2.7%.
According to the First Data SpendTrend Closed-Loop Prepaid Cards analysis for the full month of November 2010 compared with November 2009, which tracks U.S. same-merchant activations, redemptions and reloads of merchant-branded prepaid cards, including spending, gift, incentive and promotional cards, activation transaction growth was 10%, a slight decline from the 11.7% growth in October 2010.
As the holiday shopping season commenced, merchants aggressively promoted incentive cards, which improved overall year-over-year dollar volume growth, according to the report.
Year-over-year overall average ticket size of activations declined 1.3%; however, this was a significant improvement over October’s decline of -8%. As consumers shopped for holiday gifts, they increased the initial value of the prepaid closed-loop cards they purchased.