MasterCard says the prepaid card business across Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa grew 40 per cent in 2013.

It expects the momentum to continue to build in emerging markets as well as for cross border and e-commerce transactions.

And it says further growth for prepaid card business will be strongest in China.

Officially the world’s biggest spenders, Chinese’ spending on overseas travel increased 28 per cent in the first nine months of 2013.

In 2012, China became the largest outbound tourism market with 83 million overseas trips, and last year, this number grew even further to 97 million. It is expected that this year, the number will top the 100 million mark, in what will be a historic first – an amazing feat, considering that this number was just 10 million in 2000, it says.

“Coupled with the Chinese’ higher purchasing power, this presents an obvious need for electronic payments acceptance when abroad and multi-currency travel prepaid cards such as the MasterCard Cash Passport fit the bill as it takes away the hassle and risk of carrying a lot of cash while also enabling cardholders to lock in exchange rates at the time of loading to avoid fluctuations,” said Jason Tymms, MasterCard’s head of prepaid, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

E-commerce is also proving to be a key driver for prepaid growth. According to MasterCard’s Online Shopping Survey, besides China (97.8 per cent) which continues to have a strong potential for making online purchases in the next six months, Southeast Asian markets such as Vietnam (91.4 per cent) and Thailand (84.2 per cent) are also showing great potential in terms of respondents intending to make an online purchase in the next six months.