Bopo customers will have received the following letter in the mail, I just received the letter today, explaining the current situation with the Bill Express Ltd and Bopo Customers funds.

If any BOPO cardholders have any enquiries, Cuscal’s has experience support staff on hand to help with any questions regarding your account. Contact Cuscal on 02 8299 9000 between 7:30am and 6:00pm (AEST) Monday to Friday.

If your unsure what type of BOPO prepaid VISA card you currently, Cuscal has released today another Q and A article for BOPO card holders. Please visit Cuscal website for more information regarding card types.

Last night the Bopo.com.au website has been updated to inform customers that Cuscal will cancel service to BOPO cardholders in 30 days (Aug 15th 2008). BOPO cardholders are advised to withdraw funds by the 15th of Aug. Any withdrawal request after the 15th Aug will have to go through a reimbursement application via Cuscal.

from their website…

As a direct result of the above changes to Bill Express and bopo, effective 30 calendar days from the date of this notice, Cuscal is cancelling services to bopo cardholders as described in the product disclosure statement. Please see your product disclosure statement under “Cancellation of Services”.

What you should do

The money stored on your bopo card will be returned to you. To avoid having to claim a refund you should withdraw your funds via ATM or EFTPOS purchases before the expiry of the 30-day notice period. After this period, any remaining funds on your bopo card will only be accessible through an application for reimbursement to Cuscal.

Visit BOPO site to read the entire notice.

For those of you not familiar with what’s happened with the BOPO Prepaid VISA card company and their Parent company Bill Express, The AGE, BusinessDay has an article on the whole Bill Express fiasco.

The Bill Express is said to owe creditors could be more than $250 million. Debt owed to New agencies across Australia has yet to be included in the debt total.

Optus is owed an estimated $50 million from the supply of prepaid recharge codes to Bill Express, with Vodafone owed $30 million, 3 Mobile up to $20 million and $10 million for Telstra, as well as a smaller amount for smaller companies that provide prepaid overseas telephone credit. Bill Express also owes finance company Asset Secure $13 million, German broker Deutsche Forfait $10 million and $7 million for finance of its electronic terminals.

Source: BusinessDay

While big companies are hit hard, those hit hardest are the employees left without redundancy packages or benefits along side Newsagency ownerw who are now forced into unwanted legal action regarding their Bill Express Contracts. Newsagency owners have expressed their opinions on the Bill Express Fall out on a well known blog - newsagencyblog

BOPO Prepaid visa card holders can breath a sigh of relief, based on a press release from Cuscal Website (The Financial Institute that endorsed the BOPO prepaid VISA cards ) Bopo Customer funds are safe.

Below is an excerpt of the 11th July Press release. Read the entire Cuscal press release here.

Bill Express advised the market on 8 July 2008 that it has been forced to appoint administrators. This situation impacts the bopo Visa card, which is issued by Cuscal but owned by Bill Express (through a subsidiary company called bopo cards (Australia) Pty Ltd).

bopo cardholders are right to be concerned about the Bill Express news, however cardholder funds are being kept safe by Cuscal. It is important to highlight that Cuscal is a separate company to Bill Express. Cuscal is a regulated Authorised Deposit-taking Institution (ADI) with a AA- Standard & Poors’ credit rating. This makes Cuscal as safe as any other Australian bank.

Cardholders can be assured that the value stored on bopo cards will be returned to them. However, the administrator now managing Bill Express is following due process and unfortunately this is limiting the services and functionality available to bopo cardholders.

At the time of publication on Friday 11 July 2008, cardholders can still make EFTPOS purchases and ATM withdrawals, but cannot reload money on their cards.

In the event that any cardholders cannot use ATM or EFTPOS purchases to withdraw funds, Cuscal has established a process to facilitate reimbursement of funds stored within bopo card accounts.

Cuscal has offered a chart to help explain how Bopo Cardholders can view card balances and withdraw funds.

View Bopo Card Balance Chart

If your like me, your also one of the thousands of Bopo prepaid card holders left in cold, wondering what’s happening with the available funds within their Bopo prepaid accounts.

As of last week BOPO and all of it’s associated companies are under appointment of an Administrator or in the process of being sold.

From what I’ve gathered online, many Bopo prepaid customers are unable to get in contact with BOPO customer support, this is due to the company being forced into administration. Comments from the Newagencyblog have indicated that BOPO call center staff were let go last Tuesday.

Financial Institiute Cuscal, which handles Authorised Deposit-taking from BOPO has stated that they will provide support for BOPO customers.

Cuscal will work towards meeting its obligations to current bopo cardholders, including of course, ensuring cardholders receive their money. However, the future of the bopo product is likely to be limited. Cuscal has noted that decisions taken by the administrator demonstrate an intention to rapidly cease operational support for the bopo card product.

I suggest those of you with available funds to look into withdrawing funds immediately. I only have very limited funds in my account, grand total of $5 (I think). I’ll be withdrawing mine tomorrow… guess who’s getting a happy meal tomorrow.