Salmon to launch prepaid card for revolving credit line

SALMON Group Ltd. is looking to launch a physical card in the Philippines for its revolving credit line before the end of the year.

“It is not a credit card. This is effectively a prepaid card that is attached to our revolving credit line,” Salmon co-founder and Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa (Laguna) Chairman Raffy Montemayor told a news briefing on Friday.

Salmon Credit, the fintech group’s revolving credit line service, uses QR Ph as a payment method.

“But sometimes, you need something more physical, like when you’re talking to the merchant, they’re not familiar with QR Ph, they want a card,” he said. “This gives them more options.”

The card will run on the MasterCard network, which will connect it to about 400,000 merchants in the country.

Salmon Credit was launched in September last year. The revolving credit line has zero annual fees and a credit limit of up to P50,000.

“We’re really excited about the potential of this and it’s our way of furthering access to credit to many more underserved, underbanked Filipinos,” Mr. Montemayor said.

The card will be launched in a few weeks in a limited number of offline locations.

“We’re doing a small pilot first,” he said. “We’ll start with a few hundred. We’ll announce it in a couple of weeks’ time once we’ve really finalized all the plans.”

Mr. Montemayor said they would scale up the issuance depending on the results of the pilot. “We want to be conservative. We want to make sure the process goes very smoothly.”

The initiative is a partnership between Sunprime Finance, Inc., Asia United Bank Corp. and MatchMove, a Singapore fintech enabler. — Luisa Maria Jacinta C. Jocson