PrePaid Smart Cards Exploiting the Global Smart Card Infrastructure

The growth in prepaid card products, notably in the US, has been phenomenal over recent years - annual global sales are predicted to top US$150bn by 2009. While the overwhelming bulk of that growth has been attributed to the substitution of merchants' own paper gift vouchers by magnetic stripe cards, there has also been a steady rise in the proportion of prepaid cards issued by banks - in other words, the issuers of traditional credit and debit cards. If prepaid and/or gift cards is such a good idea, why hasn't this growth been replicated in other markets? Firstly, the American public has a long tradition of gifting vouchers instead of physical presents.