Virginmoney credit card meets enter the dragon.

This ads is great, I was in tears. I think it has great viral potential.
Anyway enjoy the video and pass it on.

Don’t forget to watch MTV prepaid card ads.

With Bopo and MTV joining forces to the promote the prepaid visa card to youth market, we’ll be seeing more youth originated commercials hitting the small screen.

While this ad is cool and generate awareness, I would love to see a more viral focused campaign. Something a little more engaging and a great laugh.

I just love this ad, wish my bank managers we this hip.

This is an interesting question that’s currently being debated over the internet as financial institutions target their marketing strategies towards the youth market with student focus credit cards. Financial Institutions understand that the youth market is one of the largest driving forces for spending, but

I believe the really question is, are the teens ready to handle the responsibility of a credit card. With surveys from the US seems to indicate teens not ready yet, in a recent poll found 11% teens acknowledge that their parents make the monthly payments. 15% had made the minimum repayments and 2% had intentionally missed their monthly repayments. [Article can be found here]

Just based on the above results show that there’s a serious need to educate teens about financial planning and personal accountability. Though Parents need to follow suit and show a little bit of Tough Love no use having systems in place when Mom and Dad continue bail their children out of debt.

Where do prepaid cards fit in?
I see the prepaid credit cards being little like training wheels on my first bike. Teens gain access to all the features of a credit card, their own card, freedom to make purchases online and offline. With the only risk involved being zero balance, though teens begin to understand the value of money.

The magic bullet comes back to education, as soon as Teens understand the value of money they’re spending habits will change.

Read more about Giving Teens Credit

In a recent survey in USA conducted by The Network Branded Prepaid Card Association (NBPCA), has found that  early users of re loadable prepaid cards had positive experiences with the reloaded prepaid cards and that the service had offered a solid value.

Consumers that were more likely to pay for goods and services with cash, recognized the positive improvements when testing the prepaid credit cards as they began to understand the benefits of the service, security, convenience and the control.

The NBPCA expect to see a great card acquisition amongst this target demographic.

Read more about the Consumer expectation survey here

Wanting to gain a more dominate brand within the youth market, Bopo prepaid cards has announces that they have enter in to agreements for MTV to promote and distribute a co-branded Mtv prepaid visa card. The MTV bopo credit card is being promoted using MTV’s television network and website, targeting the youth market. The agreement is for a term of 5 years and is designed to strengthen the appeal of the bopo prepaid Visa card to this demographic.

There’s seems to be a little confusion over the Bopo Prepaid Visa Card and the Prepaid Visa cards issued by ANZ from their online website prepaidshop.com.au

While there are similarities between the cards there are differences between the Prepaid Visa cards and Prepaid Visa Gift Cards.

Both cards allow:
Cards to be used to make transactions online.
Cards can be worldwide, where Visa is accepted.

This is where the similarities end for the Prepaid Visa Gift Cards.
They’re seems to a few more restrictions on where the Prepaid Visa Gift card can be used.

The Prepaid Visa Gift Cards cannot be used in the following scenarios.
Cannot be used at an ATM
Cannot widthdraw cash from Prepaid Visa Gift Card
Cannot be used for online gambling merchants (Adult ?)
Cannot be used at petrol pumps
Express payment services
Make purchases that exceed the Card Balance.

Just with the restriction alone places the Prepaid Visa Gift cards into niche market. The Prepaid Visa Card services is definitely targeting a different type of consumer and believe it offers a great solution for those last minute shoppers.

Their Corporate services benefit both Company and Employees as Companies are able to have branded Prepaid card created and offer them as incentive rewards to employees who will benefit from the being able to make purchases where Visa is accepted.

I wasn’t able to find information regarding Bopo offering Branded Corporate cards though they do have a facility for Companies to offer employees incentive rewards to employees.

While both cards offer similar services each prepaid visa card provider, Bopo seems to have covered both by having the option of withdrawing funds from an ATM puts the Bopo card ahead.

You can review the PrepaidShop FAQ to get more information about their services.
To review the Bopo credit card fee schedule here

Both Prepaid Visa card services offer great value for their target markets, we’ll be keeping an eye out to see how both services

Websites offering the Prepaid Visa Gift Card
Prepaidshop.com.au
Cometrue.com.au

Unlike Prepaid Visa Gift Cards that is offered by ANZ the Cometrue giftcard can only be used within Australia where EFTPOS is available.

Some may see the EFTPOS only as a barrier, it really shouldn’t be as many locations that do accept VISA/Mastercard within Australia have EFTPOS available.

The ComeTrue giftcard is a no frills version of the Prepaid visa cards. They have a shorter card life as card will expires within 6 months of being issued. The Giftcards cannot be reloaded or topped up with additional funds as  the value of the gift card is set at the time of purchase.

Just like cash, if you lost it, it’s gone forever, you won’t receive a replacement cards.

Fees are minimal, $0.20 per sms balance inquiry though this can be reduced if you check your balances online. There are no transaction fees for EFTPOS transactions.

Fees & Charges (just an overview)

$5.95 - Cost of the Gift Card
$0.50 - SMS Balance inquiry
$0.75 - attempt to make a transaction with Insufficient funds
$1.50 - ATM denial Fee.

To review all of the Cometrue Gift Card fees and charges here

While some of the features may be a barrier for some, I believe that this service works well with the last minute shopper market and I personally would look forward to Christmas with Cometrue gift cards rather than boxers and Socks.

Another great feature about the Cometrue giftcard is that for every Cometrue giftcard purchased, $1.10 is given to OzChild Charity.

So if your out of ideas and need a gift that you know they will use, consider using the Cometrue giftcard service and help support a great charity.

For more about the Cometrue Giftcard visit Cometrue.com.au

We’ll for those of you that are regulars, you’ve probably noticed the changed, I can’t help changing the colors, I felt the red color was a little too strong.

Though I have this weird feeling that the color will change in a months time HEHEHE.

I also made updates to the following pages namely the Bopo Prepaid Card review and updated the Bopo prepaid visa card fees page so that it was clearer to read the Bopo fees.

I’ll be following up the Bopo card review article with my own tutorial for when I apply for the Bopo Card. Since I’m going to talk about Prepaid cards I might as well jump in the deep end and see if my current spending habits are Bopo card ready.

I’ve nearly completed the Prepaid Visa Card Comparison table. You’ll be able to quickly glance and compare the fee structure from the available Prepaid Visa Cards providers, this will be uploaded to the Prepaid Visa Cards website.

The latest figures from the financial review, Banks are starting to see a trend in the way Customers are using their Credit Cards. While the total credit card debt was up $508 Mil from the previous month, the growth rate for credit card debt is slowing. With a definite downward trend for the use of the credit card cash advances.

Which is a good indication that customers are starting to feel the effects of interest rates applied to the cash advances. The average outstanding credit card debt for bank customers is around the $3,014.

from Infochoice

NAB’s latest ATM fee rise should generate the company around $50 Million in the next year.

The fees effect NAB customers using other bank ATMs. unfortunately for NAB customers, the bank is currently upgrading their ATM’s, leaving NAB customers having to use competitor ATM’s.

Even when the ATM service returns to normal, NAB stands to reap an additional $4.5 million per month from the higher fee it extracts from its 3 million customers.

More About NAB’s ATM fee rise

Westpac, having revamped their marketing approach has proven there are tangible results in producing and promoting marketing campaigns involved with environmental, social or community causes. Corporate social responsibility is a widely circulating topic in recent years and since Westpac’s campaign launch, areas such as brand consideration, “product experience” and overall customer experience has increased strongly. Since October, Westpac reported an increase among existing accounts by 20 per cent, and the number of customers leaving the bank decreasing by 25 per cent.

Article from InfoChoice

A new Australian committee has been created to identify potential issues with the new smart cards. The Australian Payments Clearing Association established which is made up of representatives from Visa, MasterCard, merchants, card issuers and card acquires.

APCA sets, manages and develops regulations, procedures and standards governing payments clearing and settlement within Australia.

It will be interesting to see what standard the committee will put in place to help customers make the smooth transition to the Smart Cards.

Another Bopo Prepaid Visa Card TV ad. Haven’t seen any of the ads on TV yet though I believe they’ve been on the MTV. Recently Bopo prepaid card and MTV had enter into agreements that will allow MTV to promote and distribute a co-branded MTV prepaid visa card to the youth market. The MTV prepaid credit card will allow Bopo to reach one of the largest consumer markets in Australia.

These youth focus commercials definitely hit the mark.

Well it took sometime but we finally got around to integrating the latest wordpress theme.
We hope you all like it.

I’m still reviewing the Comparison data for the Prepaid visa cards Vs Standard Credit Cards, I’m hoping to have it online for you all by next week.

Here’s another cool youth oriented Bopo prepaid visa card Ad.
With anyone under 18 being able to apply for their own Bopo prepaid card offers teens the freedom to shop anywhere. Where was Bopo when i was young… I would’ve been to many more concert.

For this frugal blogger, I couldn’t help mention HSBC’s new serious saver account. HSBC is offering customers great saving benefits with the HSBC Serious Saver Account:

* No bank fees
* No minimum opening or ongoing account balance
* Earn an incredible 6.40% p.a.* for every month you don’t make a withdrawal

For those of you saving for a rainy day, the HSBC serious saver account, will help you save for many rainy days.

Early this year HSBC won Money Magazines “Money Minder of the year” award.

HSBC has been named Money Magazine’s ‘2007 Money Minder of the Year’ second year in a row.

The ‘Money Minder of the Year’ award is for the organisation deemed most likely to have a deposit account delivering value for money, no matter how you do your banking..
….So no matter where you are or what you’re doing, HSBC can help you with your financial requirements, providing a range of products to suit every individual.

The days of getting bad reads at the eftpos on your credit cards may be over. That black little magnetic strip will soon be replaced by the VISA Smart Cards.

VISA Smart Cards have been issued to ANZ customers since 2003 and over the next month Westpac and Commonwealth Banks will issue Smart cards to new VISA and Mastercard cardholders.

The Visa Smart cards have computer chips integrated into the credit card which allows more information and offer greater flexibility to both the customer and potentially to the retailers as well, through the use loyalty reward programs.

Though makes you wonder how much information do you really want to have on your credit card? I guess I’ll leave that for another post

more details about the move to the Visa Smart Card can be found here

Bopo has released a cool and funky video streaming commercial targeting the young adult market and I personal think it will do well in generating awareness for this lucrative market. Bopo’s reload options offers any tech savvy adult a fast and secure way to send and receive money to family and friends.

Click here to view the Bopo Video

To get more information about Bopo Prepaid VISA Cards visit the website bopo.com.au

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Sorry all, We’ve been playing around with a new theme and some of our pages have disappeared from the navigation. We’re currently looking into the issue and will have the pages up and running shortly.

Cheers
FrugalBlogger

Bopo prepaid Visa Card have updated there fee schedules and it’s looking good for us frugal , money conscious denizens. Bopo.com has reduced their over the counter fee from $1.50 to $1. Bpay fee schedule has also been added to the new schedule which is also $1 for any load transactions.

You can review both fee schedules here Bopo Prepaid Visa Card Fees.

One the cool new features added to the Bopo prepaid VISA cards is the option of reloading funds via the Paypal online transaction facilities. Paypal.com, which is an Ebay.com company allows customers to send and recieve money quickly and securely online.
below is an extract from the Paypal website.

PayPal has quickly become a global leader in online payment solutions with 100 million account members worldwide. Available in 190 countries around the world, buyers and sellers on eBay, online retailers, online businesses, as well as traditional offline businesses are transacting with PayPal.

Tapping into a huge market like Paypal Australia would potentially allow Bopo to gain a larger piece of the Prepaid Visa Card market. Hopefully we’ll be able to see a reduction on the cost of purchasing a Prepaid Visa Card as Bopo continues to grow.