The News of the World and Tuxedo Money Solutions, a leading programme manager in prepaid cards have launched a co-branded prepaid ‘Top-up as you go’ MasterCard® with PayPoint, the UK’s leading convenience retail bill payment network.  

The News of the World MasterCard® Prepaid card will be advertised through the newspaper and customers can apply by phone or online at www.newsoftheworldprepaid.co.uk. The cost of the card is only £6.49. For launch, the card will also offer £5 cash back on the first load of credit (minimum £10) – making the effective price of the first pack only £1.49. Customers can top-up credit as they go, giving them the reassurance that they cannot overspend.

PayPoint has been chosen as the exclusive electronic top-up partner enabling consumers to top-up their News of the World MasterCard® prepaid card at over 18,500 outlets nationwide. PayPoint retailers will earn 1% commission on all top-up transactions.

Mike Igoe, PayPoint’s Retail Director commented: “We are delighted to be adding the News of the World MasterCard® prepaid card to our extensive range of prepaid card schemes available for top-up at PayPoint. With high profile advertising of the card to over 9 million readers in the News of the World, this is further good news for PayPoint retailers as customers will be visiting our agents to load credit on a regular basis. This continues with our commitment to introduce new initiatives to drive traffic into PayPoint outlets”.

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Enquiries
PayPoint Press Office
020 7100 9999
paypoint@mischiefpr.com

Notes to Editors
PayPoint is the leading cash and internet payments company in the UK and Ireland, handling in excess of £6 billion in over 470 million transactions annually for more than 5,000 clients and merchants. The company operates with several significant payment streams:

• The PayPoint branded retail network numbers over 19,000 terminals located in local shops (including Co-op, Spar, Costcutter, Sainsburys Local, One Stop, Londis and thousands of independents) in all parts of the UK and Ireland. Terminals handle gas and electricity meter prepayments, cash bill payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, London Congestion Charges, TV licences and a wide variety of other payment types for all of the leading utilities, telecommunications suppliers and many consumer service companies. This network is used by consumers, free of charge, 8 million times a week. The network has 97.3% population cover on a 1 mile urban or 5 miles rural measure;
• Additional multiple retailer connections into the electronic till systems of nearly 4,000 outlets including BP, Somerfield and Superdrug for mobile top-ups and selected payments from the PayPoint range;
• The PayPoint ATM network has 1,950 'LINK' branded machines across the UK, also typically in convenience stores;
• PayPoint Internet Payment Services, trading as Metacharge and SECPay, provides secure credit and debit card payments for over 4,500 web merchants linking into all the major UK acquiring banks; and
• PayPoint International has recently acquired a Romanian mobile top-up operator to which a bill payment service will be added, emulating the UK branded retail network. PayPoint International also operates Irish bill payment and top-up services.

PayPoint floated on the London Stock Exchange in September 2004. The company's market capitalisation at 23 January 2008 was £435 million. PayPoint has been awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise and is widely recognised for its leadership in prepayment systems, smart technology and consumer service.