Gap Year Card Corporate Press Release

Advanced Payment Solutions Limited and Gapyear.com launch first consumer card for the £2.2bn ‘Gap Year’ travel market as a business to business marketing strategy

Europe’s leading prepaid card company, Advanced Payment Solutions, is today launching a prepaid card aimed at gap year students, in partnership with Gapyear.com, the world’s largest dedicated ‘Gap Year’ community. It is the first prepaid card to come with a comprehensive travel discount network, providing a new lead generation tool to travel partners around the world.

By using the new card, which is issued by Broadcastle Bank Ltd, gap year students, or ‘gappers’, get access to 10% discounts at hundreds of travel partners worldwide. In return, the travel partners get listings on and leads generated from the card’s website, www.gapyearcard.com, where cardholders do online banking and card account management.

Because the card is a general purpose card, meaning that it can be used anywhere, online, by phone and in store, Advanced Payment Solutions will be able to capture all of the consumer’s spending habits through purchase transaction data and be able to identify trends and new marketing opportunities for its partner Gapyear.com to pursue.

Rich Wagner, Chief Executive of Advanced Payment Solutions says:

'Prepaid cards are a vastly under used marketing tool that blow the work of focus groups out of the water. Rather than asking would a gap year consumer buy this or that, you can more simply identify through the spending data what they are buying that your marketing partner is not yet providing. The partner can then go and bring the most compatible supplier into the fold, at the proven price point. It is a very precise process.'

'It gives brand partners a compelling tool which they can use to negotiate deals on volume and frequency. Tesco has been lauded for its very successful club card scheme, and rightly so. Data is king when you need to be able to drill down into a niche consumer group and refine your offering. A general purpose prepaid card is a diagnostic tool for doing so,' he says.

Gapyear.com partnered with Advanced Payment Solutions, enabling it to bring its brand to life with its own design and messaging on the card plastic and the self service card website, but by using existing infrastructure. The card programme is one of Advanced Payment Solutions’ award winning Chip and PIN prepaid cards, able to be used at 25 million MasterCard acceptance locations worldwide. The card is issued by Broadcastle Bank Ltd, serviced by Advanced Payment Solutions and marketed through Gapyear.com.

Commenting on the launch, Tom Griffiths, founder of gapyear.com says:

'Launching a prepaid card was an excellent way to leverage the brand value of Gapyear.com. From a business development perspective, it made sense to look at how we could turn our high traffic site into a more transaction orientated portal. The Gap Year Card is an enabler for commercially interacting between the site users and the travel industry and to get feedback from our core consumer group about what to focus on next so that we can go after viable new offerings.

'We’re experts in gap years and marketing to our target audience. We didn’t want to become an expert in card programmes. We spoke to many other potential suppliers in the market place since 2002 and only APS could deliver the complexity of the programme we were after and support it with a level of customer service we were happy to attach our brand to, which is the biggest risk you have when your brand is your core asset.

'It really is a ‘best of breed’ partnership approach with two award winning market leaders coming together to offer a new product,' says Tom Griffiths.

The Gap Year Card:
The Gap Year prepaid travel card gives cardholders access to 25 million MasterCard merchants worldwide online, in store and by phone and at over 1 million MasterCard ATMs around the globe. It is a personalised, Chip and PIN card and offers purchase protection in line with credit based products, but also includes protection for purchases under £100, which is ideal for younger users making smaller transactions, and for visitors to countries with a weaker currency than the UK, for whom many transactions would fall beneath the credit protection threshold. It can be topped up at over 20,000 outlets throughout the UK, 15,000 of which are free and, conveniently for parents, by standing order.

• Advanced Payment Solutions Ltd: Winner of Best Prepaid Card Launch at the Annual Cards and Payments Conference, Berlin, May 2007
• Advanced Payment Solutions Ltd: Winner of Best Service Provider in Europe at MasterCard Prepaid Innovation Awards, Prague, May 2007
• Advanced Payment Solutions Ltd: Winner of Most Innovative New Product in Retail Banking in the United Kingdom, London, November 2006

• Gapyear.com: Winner of Best Website 2007 at the Britain Youth travel awards

Additionally, cashplus is the only prepaid card programme in the UK that voluntarily offers payment and purchase protection under the Consumer Credit Act, further demonstrating APS’ confidence in its cashplus range of products.

- Ends -

About Advanced Payment Solutions
Advanced Payment Solutions was established in early 2004 to become the pre-eminent leader of general purpose prepaid cards and payment solutions in the United Kingdom and the rest of europe.

Its senior management team and board of directors have unparalleled experience in the prepaid and payment industries, bringing together experience from Barclaycard, VISA, Bank of America, Netspend, Virgin Group and easyGroup.

The company, backed by leading US private equity and venture capital firm Trident Capital, aims to lead the european prepay market growth to emulate the success of prepaid payment cards in the US where prepaid cards now make up a trillion dollar market.

APS' first prepaid payment card, the cashplus prepaid MasterCard, launched in September 2005, is the UK's first general purpose prepaid chip and PIN payment card. Cardholders can top-up their card at over 20,000 locations throughout the UK. Alongside developing its cashplus product portfolio, APS provides a suite of services for businesses wanting to offer branded prepaid products to their customers.

Consumer website: www.mycashplus.co.uk
Corporate website: www.apsgroup.com

Gapyear.com

Established in 1998, gapyear.com provides young travellers with the opportunity to belong to an online community, share their experiences, seek good advice and purchase their travel items from a one-stop-shop. Gapyear.com continues to be the world's largest gap year information source and community with over 1 million users annually.

Founders Tom Griffiths and Peter Pedrick are regarded as the leading authorities on 'gap years' in the UK and around the world, consulting governments and acting as media spokespeople on gap year, youth and travel related issues. What was once a vision of the two pioneers has now become a reality - an industry valued globally at over £5bn*. (*2005 Mintel Gap Year Report)

Consumer website: www.gapyear.com
Card website: www.gapyearcard.com
Travel discount network: www.gapyearcard.com/adviceanddiscounts

Gap Year cashplus is issued by Broadcastle Bank Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (www.fsa.gov.uk/register)

cashplus is serviced by Advanced Payment Solutions Ltd which is a registered agent of Broadcastle Bank Ltd for this purpose.

For further information, please contact:

Claire Marnham
Account Director
Hume Brophy Communications
Tel: 020 7499 8736
Mobile: 07766 186061
Email: claire.marnham@humebrophy.com

Tom Griffiths
Founder of Gapyear.com
Email: vlee@gapyear.com
Tel: through Vicky Lee, 01473 230 766