Background

 
Flex –e-vouchers have developed the shopping mall gift card market and operate gift card schemes at over 70 shopping centres, and paper gift voucher schemes at over 20 shopping centres.  Recently Flex-e-vouchers have moved into the prepaid market offering employers an easy way to pay migrant workers.

The challenge

Flex-e-vouchers have developed a scheme for employers of migrant workers where they can pay their wages directly onto a prepaid maestro card.  Most migrant workers will not have a bank account and are traditionally paid by cheque.  They therefore have to pay commission to have this cheque cashed and further commission to get this money wired back to their families.  For migrant workers who are earning minimum wage this can substantially eat into their earnings.

As with all prepaid cards that can be topped up there are strict Know Your Customer requirements which Flex-e-vouchers have been quick to ensure they are complying with such as the UK Anti-Money Laundering Regulations 2007.  With 20-30 thousand cards expected to be in use over the next year, for employers in various industries such as supermarkets, fruit picking or factories, Flex-e-vouchers had a challenge on their hands to verify employee’s identities.

The Solution

As part of the identity verification of workers Flex-e-vouchers work with employers to guide their employees through an online identity verification.  This includes taking the machine readable code on the passport which Flex-e-vouchers use to verify that the passport is a genuine document, using 192business.

“We ensure that each worker who signs up to the scheme via their employer is not fraudulent.  We use 192business to check the passport MRZ code to ensure the passport is a genuine document and not falsified.  With 192business we find we stop around 8% of employees who are trying to obtain employment using a false passport”

The future

Flex-e-vouchers are shortly going to be selling their gift cards online and need to ensure that they are stopping high levels of fraud that can occur with online gift schemes.

“We are currently looking into implementing 192business’ full identity and fraud checks to ensure we are stopping high chargebacks impacting our bottom line”.