Netspend has announced an official debit card partnership with the Leagues Cup, an inaugural soccer tournament taking place this summer in the U.S.
The deal will see Netspend‘s new multicurrency travel wallet and payments super app, dubbed the X World Wallet, take centerstage during the sports event taking place from July 21 to August 19.
Commenting on the news, Roy Sosa, Netspend’s chairman, CEO and co-founder, said that the acquisition is a “tremendous opportunity” to cater to multicultural consumers and allows Netspend to “directly engage the consumers our product can most benefit in the environment where we want to reach them and learn with them in real time to adapt and scale our products to best meet their needs.”
Sosa added: “We ultimately see this a model that can change the game for sports sponsorships to become more of a laboratory for innovation than only a vehicle for recognition.”
The launch of Netspend’s X World Wallet comes on the heels of the company’s $1 billion acquisition by payments company Rêv Worldwide from Global Payments.
The all-cash transaction, which was announced in May, put the prepaid card provider back under the control of Rêv founders Roy Sosa and Bertrand Sosa, who both founded Netspend in 1999.
“This acquisition represents both a reunion and reimagining of the vision of financial empowerment we pioneered at Netspend more than 20 years ago,” Sosa said at the time in his capacity as Rêv chairman and CEO.
“Netspend has a well-deserved reputation for creating and delivering innovative products tailored to fulfill the important needs of all its customers, from the underserved to the affluent. This transaction sets us up for strong future success and profitable growth,” he added.
Since its launch, Netspend has processed hundreds of billions of dollars in cardholder purchases and established a retail partner network with more than 130,000 locations.
As PYMNTS noted earlier this year, prepaid cards continue to prove popular around the world, and in the U.K. is helping seniors and their families avoid falling prey to hackers and scams.