Optimus Cards Group is a fantastic, niche B2B service company based in England that offers a great example of how business needs exist that consumers would never think of. In their case, Optimus Cards addresses a longstanding problem that credit unions in the UK and Ireland face: they are usually too small to have their own debit cards.
Though it would never occur to most of us, debit cards rely on a complex ecosystem of transaction processors, funding agreements, settlement structures, gateways and more. Each of those puzzle pieces is operated by a company that requires a minimum volume of transactions, which small credit unions can’t even approach. Thus, they frequently rely on the less desirable prepaid card scheme, which requires refilling and which is not universally accepted at merchants.
Optimus solves this problem by establishing their own ecosystem relationships, and then aggregating multiple credit unions under their banner to achieve the necessary volumes. It’s like a union, except instead of collective bargaining agreements, they band together for a complex financial infrastructure that allows them to have the exact same debit card operations as the big banks. Credit unions are happy, and their members are thrilled.
As part of the startup marketing projects Optimus brought us on for, we put together a website for them. We crafted the website’s design, wrote the copy, sourced and customized the images, and built the whole thing. No bells and whistles necessary, just a clean, eye-catching web presence where people could go to gain an understanding of the program, and get in touch with the team. It loads quickly, looks great on mobile devices, and fits nicely alongside the established look and feel of most financial services industry companies without fitting exactly into it. Moreover, the site has the skeleton necessary to grow in almost limitless ways in the future without a rebuild. A great investment for Optimus, and a great project for us.
