Two German companies, Wirecard and the startup givve, are expanding their partnership to develop more programs for companies to deliver employee benefits via prepaid cards.
Givve, launched in 2014, provides a prepaid Mastercard issued by Wirecard. With givve’s June 2018 acquisition by
Wirecard aims to apply new techniques and technology to further customize employee loyalty and incentives, Wirecard said in the release. Wirecard will leverage experience gained from its 2016
One model Wirecard will look to emulate is Isuzu Trucks, one of its U.S. clients, which offers digital and card payment solutions, including corporate payroll, sales incentives, refunds, incentives and bonuses, the spokesperson said.
In Europe, Wirecard and givve will collaborate on wider use cases for existing corporate payment solutions to suit Europe’s patchwork of different payment practices and customers. For example, German law requires employers to deliver fringe benefits in the form of products or services, not cash. Wirecard has devised a way for employers to deliver these benefits through prepaid cards, which offer greater spending flexibility (up to the legal maximum of 44 euros per month).
“With Wirecard, our card can be topped up by users, extending its lifespan and enabling employees to use the card as an alternative cashless payment method on an ongoing basis,” said Patrick Loffler, givve’s co-founder and CEO, in the release.
“In the U.S., we have been serving this market for many years, in which time the number of issued cards has grown by 75 percent while expenditure using employee benefit cards has risen around 45 percent,” said Joanne Ridgway, Wirecard’s head of account management, in the release.
