Prepaid Card Papers Italy with Plastic

In 1996, when Massimo Sarmi was general manager of Italian mobile-phone operator TIM, he was part of the team that invented the rechargeable prepaid SIM card that let customers buy wireless calls in advance. Prepaid SIMs opened up the mobile market to millions of new users: people with limited budgets or spotty credit histories, immigrants, children, tourists, and so on. The concept was largely responsible for TIM's (TI) early success and was copied all over the world.

Now, as CEO of Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service, Sarmi has replicated the idea in financial services. His "Postepay" card, accepted by the Visa Electron network, is a prepaid, rechargeable Visa or MasterCard that is rapidly becoming the credit card surrogate of choice for Italians without plastic, credit ratings, or even bank accounts.