Univision Communications announced a strategic alliance with MasterCard to introduce two new prepaid financial services, the Univision Prepaid MasterCard Card (Tarjeta Univision MasterCard Prepagada) and the Univision MasterCard Gift Card (Tarjeta de Regalo Univision). These prepaid cards will be available nationally in 2010 and are being developed to provide Hispanic consumers with access to relevant, flexible and valuable financial tools that can be used anywhere Debit MasterCard is accepted.
“Univision’s mission is to inform, empower and entertain the Hispanic community,” said Joe Uva, Univision CEO. “We recognize, better than anyone, the importance of empowering Hispanics by connecting them with financial tools and services they can trust. Our financial services offering is an extension of our ‘Cuentas Claras’ initiative. We’re proud to partner with MasterCard, a payments leader that shares our goal of providing the tools, resources and services to empower our community.”
The card will offer the U.S. Hispanic community a culturally relevant, safe, cost-effective alternative to cash. The prepaid card reduces the inconvenience and costs related to cashing checks and enables consumers to better track and manage spending by providing them with the ability to monitor when and where they make purchases with the card.
Said Chris McWilton, president, U.S. Markets, MasterCard: “Many U.S. Hispanics rely heavily on cash, and in doing so fail to take advantage of the safety, convenience and reliability of electronic payments. Together with Univision we will provide access to financial products and education that benefit the Hispanic community and open the door to the mainstream financial system for many individuals who are not currently well served by it.”
According to a study by the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), approximately 40 million U.S. Households are financially underserved (106 million people), of whom 19% are Hispanic. In addition, 35.4% of Hispanic-Americans are unbanked vs. 31.6% of Black Non-Hispanic Americans and 11.2% of Other Americans (i.e., Non-Hispanic and non-Black, including Asian-Americans and Whites).
The Univision MasterCard prepaid products will be issued by The Bancorp Bank.
