Open electronic purses will eventually be successful and widespread. However the process will be lengthy and costly to the banks unless they quickly and effectively learn from the existing widespread experience of prepaid cards. They are missing potential revenue streams and key areas of customer appeal They need to focus on the purse's areas of competitive advantage but currently most schemes are not doing this. The consequences are likely to prove expensive and to slow the introduction of purses. Prepayment cards already exist on a massive scale and have proved operationally and financially successful.
Reloadable cards are of most benefit where they have additional functionality.
Purses are popular with certain customer segments not reached by conventional card products. To displace cash, the electronic purse must offer a better proposition in either convenience or cost. Open electronic purses have been driven as much by the desire to find an extra application to justify the cost of migration to chip cards as by any business case. For most people, the consumer proposition will be far from compelling until purses are accepted almost as widely as cash. On the other side, retailers are expecting a payment mechanism will be cheaper than existing cards and cash.