Combining Services at The Prepaid Press Expo

We've been taking part in The Prepaid Press Expo for some years now, and there have been some significant changes in that time. The event has always taken a broad perspective on 'prepaid', but this year saw a change in format with the separation of the financial and telecoms sectors into parallel streams.

In my view, this has brought more clarity to both the conference sessions and exhibition halls. The approach also coincides well with the increasing combination of these services at the retail point of sale. By offering a mix of prepaid international telephony, mobile top-ups, bill payments and gift card services, local stores can keep their customers coming back for more, and service providers gain more value from each retail outlet.

In terms of direct conversations, we've noticed that an increasing number of telecoms resellers - particularly those distributing PINless services - want to offer their own products and services. Several reasons come to mind, but a key factor is that Cloud services now make it simpler for successful resellers to set up so that they can see more value from their own sales partnerships.

So prepaid products are mature and developing into an ecosystem of services and features. New service providers need to hit the ground running, with everything other established competitors can offer - and more - so that they can concentrate on their sales and distribution relationships. At the same time, these new providers need low-risk platform solutions with low overheads so that the numbers add up as they move to running their own services.

By the time we get to next year's Prepaid Press Expo, we're expecting there to be plenty more prepaid service providers in the market and at the event, bringing a combination of new services to their customers, fully integrated to make distribution, sales and adoption as simple - and profitable - as possible. We hope to see you there!