Prepaid part of energy convergence in Germany

Wiesbaden, Germany-based prepaid card provider Peaches AG believes prepaid electricity metering will play a substantial role in the convergence of electricity payments in Germany. 2014 will see a greater reliance on consumers accessing prepaid accounts via TVs and mobile phones to top up electricity accounts, the company predicted.

"Convergence services include second screens, e-health and prepaid energy, for example, all of which are value-added services that increase customer brand loyalty," said Reinhold M. Sigler, Managing Director of Peaches. "The German economy should definitely use 2014 to introduce these types of combinational systems to increase customer loyalty."

Sigler noted that the German prepaid market lags behind other markets, but that electricity payments, along with music and game downloads, would soon become prevalent in Germany.

In the United States, the use of prepaid electricity metering is expanding. It began in Arizona in the early 1990s, where Salt River Project, a utility company that serves the Phoenix metropolitan area, first implemented it. Oregon started its own prepaid metering program in 2010, followed by Texas in 2011.

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