e-Wallets Can Now be Used as Prepaid Cards

The government issued certain guidelines for the e-wallets recently, as per which you will have to maintain higher compliance standards for using these services. However, it is also pushing for interoperability as well, which means that you should be able to use any particular e-wallet with any kind of e-commerce store or even an offline merchant. For now, certain stores like Flipkart, Snapdeal are accepting only a few e-wallets, mainly the ones owned by them.

Prepaid Cards for e-Wallets

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To promote the growth and acceptance of e-wallets or a large scale, companies are now offering prepaid cards for their customers. So, a customer can load their e-wallet balance on the prepaid card and start using it just like any typical debit card.

The problem that was prevalent for a long time was that e-wallet companies had exclusive tie-ups with the e-commerce stores, which is why these e-wallets could only be used by customers shopping on the partner stores. For this problem, approaching Visa or MasterCard platform was found to be an ideal solution as almost every merchant accepts Visa or MasterCard powered cards.

Since only banks have the authority to issue prepaid cards, e-wallet companies are now partnering with them. For, instance IDFC Bank and RBL Bank are offering prepaid cards in association with Mobikwik e-wallet and The Mobile Wallet, respectively.

The Working

Prepaid cards are usually issued for the MasterCard and Visa platforms by the partner banks. These are similar to the standard debit cards and have a 16-digit unique identification number, an expiry date, as well as a CVV number.
One major difference between the prepaid cards and the debit cards is that the former is usually virtual in nature and you can generate it using your e-wallet app on your own. However, some e-wallets have recently started offering physical cards as well. These come with a personal identification number (PIN) for security purposes (akin to debit cards).