PPRO visits the IAA

We have just returned from IAA, the leading International Trade Fair for Mobility, Transportation and Logistics – which centered on vehicles such as lorries, buses, pallet transporters, taxis etc. It was fantastic to see Mercedes’ presentation of “future truck”, an enormous unmanned lorry.

You might wonder what a payment hub is doing at this type of show? The answer is not an obvious one: we were introducing pre-paid cards for truck breakdown assistance.

As a licensed e-money institute and principal member with MasterCard and VISA, we are able to issue pre-paid cards for consumers and corporates. We have been doing this for quite a while already under our own brands, VIABUY and Crosscard, however the use for these payment tools in cases like this are huge! The Austrian company Service 24, a provider of mobility solutions for truck and logistics companies, previously reached out to us with the idea of an “assistance card”.

We felt it was a strong idea and created a product together, the S24 Assistance Card and this is how it works: if a truck breaks down, the driver needs to pay a fine or the fuel tank is empty and the next petrol station that accepts his (usually closed loop) petrol card is too far away, the trucker calls the S24 call centre, explains the problem and S24 transfer the amount needed to the empty pre-paid card in real time. The driver can then pay the breakdown cost, the fine or the garage without having to use his own money. If too much money was transferred, S24 can take back the excess, or alterenatively, transfer more as necessary. So easy, and very useful!

The demand for this is high – at IAA, a number of both large and small companies requested information. If you want to know more, get in touch with us!