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National City Corp., Cleveland, has begun selling a so-called non-personalized version of Visa USA's TravelMoney prepaid card, which replaces traveler's checks. National City, which is the sole major bank issuing either personalized or non-personalized versions of Visa's plastic for travelers, is offering instant issue of the new card, embossed with an account number, expiration date, and the slogan “Travel Made Simple,” but not with the cardholder's name, from any of its 1,200 branches in seven states. Customers can load up to $1,500 on the card, and are allowed three reloads with the same maximum. To promote the new card, which is good at any location that accepts Visa signature debit cards, National City is offering a $25 coupon from Marriott Corp. to any customer who buys a card between now and Aug. 31. While Visa introduced the TravelMoney prepaid product 10 years ago, National City is the only major bank issuing the card. Some 1,200 community banks offer it through arrangements with their trade associations, according to Visa, and 10 other organizations, including a number of supermarket chains and the American Automobile Association, also distribute the product. National City refuses to project how many of the new non-personalized cards it plans to issue, calling the number “proprietary.” Fearing the potential for criminal activity, as well as regulatory sanctions, banks have generally shied away from payment products offering anonymity for users, but National City says its new, non-personalized version requires user identification. Buyers of the card give their names, addresses, and other identifying information, which the bank links to the card accounts. Since the bank is issuing cards on the spot in its branches, the plastic does not carry cardholders' names. “While the physical plastic is generically embossed 'Travel Made Simple,' National City collects cardholder information and registers the card when it is sold so that it is not truly anonymous,” says Roger Piskos, a senior vice president at the bank, in an e-mail message to Digital Transactions News. “Additionally, reloads are limited to three, which helps mitigate risk.” The card represents a revenue opportunity for the bank. Users pay a fee of $7.95 to buy one, and then pay a $2.95 charge for each reload. ATM withdrawals cost $2 each in the U.S. And, though the card comes with a PIN, point-of-sale transactions are handled as signature debit payments, which carry higher interchange rates than PIN debit transactions. TravelMoney transactions are processed by WildCard Systems Inc., a unit of eFunds Corp.
