Integrated payments provider Financial Software and Systems is targeting the expected increase in international travelers as the pandemic eases by enabling issuers to provide branded programs on FSS' prepaid multi-currency card.
The FSS United Issuance Platform provides the card technology with enhancements that allow cardholders to set up the ability to transact through currency "purses" on demand, block and unblock their card, and request an instant additional card.
The Mumbai, India-based issuing platform powers 800 million cards globally.
"As a global leader in card management platforms, we continue to innovate at a pace to help banks and fintechs differentiate their cards portfolio," Sathish N. Dy, chief product officer at FSS, said in a Tuesday press release.
The FSS platform for prepaid cards now allows the addition of a currency purse supported by the issuer on-demand as an addition to an existing prepaid account. The mobile wallet is provisioned on verification that the cardholder does not have a pre-existing currency purse from another provider linked to the same card account.
The cards automatically detect the local currency when making purchases at merchants or ATMs abroad and use the specific currency wallet for the transaction with no additional conversion or foreign transaction charges typically associated with using debit or credit cards abroad.
In the event of a fund deficit in a specific wallet account, the monies are debited from other currency wallets — based on the priority defined by the cardholder. In the event of insufficient funds in the U.S. dollar wallet, but sufficient funds in the euro wallet, the system automatically converts the equivalent of the total amount to euro and debits it from the euro wallet.
To protect against fraud, cardholders can switch on and switch off specific currency wallets when not in use. The other currency wallets linked to the card account remain active even if a particular currency wallet is temporarily switched off.
The API-based FSS platform supports the issuing of both virtual and physical cards. Issuers can also expose APIs to third-party providers to create a service ecosystem that addresses other travel needs of its customers.
