By Babajide Komolafe
3Line Card Management Limited has unveiled Freedom Card, an electronic prepaid payment card designed to provide millions of unbanked Nigerians access to financial services.

Freedom card is a multi-function card which functions as an electronic purse with a virtual account.
“It is designed for the millions of unbanked who do not have a bank account.

“With Freedom cards, these unbanked can have access to financial services and also enjoy the convenience and comfort of electronic banking,” said Funke Ade-Ojo, General Manager, 3Line.

“With Freedom cards they can make purchases, transfer funds and withdraw cash through Freedom Network of Point of Sales (PoS) deployed in merchants location across the country”, she said while conducting journalists on a facility tour of the company in Lagos on Thursday.

“Freedom card holders can also use it to withdraw cash and make purchases through ATMs and PoS of banks on the Interswitch network”, she said.

Explaining the rationale for Freedom card, Ade-Ojo said, “While the electronic payment culture has grown in Nigeria, the growth is yet to extend to the low end of the market represented by the informal sectors which are mostly outside the banking system.

“These millions outside the system is a huge market with peculiar needs. Freedom card is developed in response to these needs and it is designed to help them meet basic banking needs through the convenience and flexibility of electronic payment.

“So the card is aimed at bringing in more of the informal sector into the formal sector.”
To achieve this, the company plans a massive deployment of specialised PoS, which allows the card holder to make purchases and do funds transfer.

Conventional PoS can only be used to make purchases.

Also one of the benefits of the Freedom card is that the card holder can withdraw cash and reload the card with money through the merchants.

And to make the services affordable, the company has graduated the charges based on the amount of money the card holder wants to withdraw or load into the card.

The company has already deployed 500 of the specialised PoS, said Ade-Ojo, adding that the whole of South-West zone would be covered in the first phase of the deployment.

3Line Card designs, builds, and operates an end to end electronic payment infrastructure which allows organiza-tions, government agencies and individuals to collect, bank, transfer or withdraw cash electronically, anytime, anywhere, making money safe and secure at all times.

And in anticipation of the targeted millions of unbanked expected to be holders of Freedom card and the concomitant millions of transactions per day on its network, the company has installed massive I.T infrastructure, with 24 hours customer care center.

The company also procured two Matica (Z 30) cards machine each with capacity to produce 40,000 cards in 12 hours.
This, according to Ade-Ojo, is to cope with expected demand for Freedom cards by prospective card holder.

To ensure seamless operations on its network, the company has a facility that enables it monitor every part of its operations online, and hence enable it to promptly detect and rectify any hiccup in operations in any merchant location.