We had stored value card payment system in Uzbekistan somewhere from 2003-2005 to 2010-2012. But no-one ever called it "stored value card", basically, I learnt the word today :) Everyone just called it "offline cards", in contrast with "online cards" which required Internet to do transactions.
The system was called UzKart (do not confuse with UzCard, which is modern online successor of that system). On the day when salary was paid, you had to find an online ATM or internet-connected terminal in the shop, and "load" money to the card. Then, you could use the money on the card to pay in offline terminals. Balance could be checked directly in offline terminals, you had to ask the seller to print it.
Sellers had a special offline card, called "merchant's card". In the end of the day they loaded all the transactions from an offline terminal to a merchant's card, and then brought the card to an ATM or a connected terminal, to synchronize payments with the bank account.
If, for some reason, at the time of synchronization some payments failed to clear, payer's card was banned and they had an angry call from the bank.
When the system was introduced, internet connection was expensive and unreliable. It co-existed with online cards, but merchants strongly preferred to deal with offline cards. As soon as mobile internet become cheaper and more widespread, offline cards died because of the hassle with "loading" and "unloading" them.
In the early 90s I lived in Guelph, Canada. We were one of a couple of pilot cities for Mondex, a stored value card system that I think was owned by MasterCard. The city got a bunch of funding to get Mondex working everywhere from parking meters to buses, payphones, and of course private businesses. Everyone who wanted one was sent a Mondex card and a portable card reader which looked like a small calculator. You could put your card in it and press your thumb on a button to make the display show your balance. That little device allowed you to transfer money between cards if I recall, but I never figured out how. You could also see your past transactions and set a card PIN.
One of the cooler things Mondex could do was an early form of online banking. Some households were issued special phones from Bell Canada that looked like regular Nortel phones with a yellow card reader attached to the side and a much larger screen. You could log in to your bank directly from the phone and transfer money out of your account into the card. You could also use an ATM if you didn't have the phone.
It was a pretty neat technology but at just around the same time Interac debit payments really started to take off and people were much happier to have a card linked to their accounts rather than a card with a balance you could lose. The payments were also pretty slow, so anyone paying for the bus slowed the line down.
I still have my card and reader somewhere and I think it has a few dollars left on it. The last time I looked, many years ago, the only transactions that showed up on the reader were coffee purchases at Tim Hortons.
The system was called UzKart (do not confuse with UzCard, which is modern online successor of that system). On the day when salary was paid, you had to find an online ATM or internet-connected terminal in the shop, and "load" money to the card. Then, you could use the money on the card to pay in offline terminals. Balance could be checked directly in offline terminals, you had to ask the seller to print it.
Sellers had a special offline card, called "merchant's card". In the end of the day they loaded all the transactions from an offline terminal to a merchant's card, and then brought the card to an ATM or a connected terminal, to synchronize payments with the bank account.
If, for some reason, at the time of synchronization some payments failed to clear, payer's card was banned and they had an angry call from the bank.
When the system was introduced, internet connection was expensive and unreliable. It co-existed with online cards, but merchants strongly preferred to deal with offline cards. As soon as mobile internet become cheaper and more widespread, offline cards died because of the hassle with "loading" and "unloading" them.
More info on UzKart and UzCard can be found (in Russian) here https://gazeta.norma.uz/publish/doc/text97703_uzkart_ot_duet... and here https://uzcard.uz/ru/news/post/uzcard-bankovskaya-tranzaktsi...
One of the cooler things Mondex could do was an early form of online banking. Some households were issued special phones from Bell Canada that looked like regular Nortel phones with a yellow card reader attached to the side and a much larger screen. You could log in to your bank directly from the phone and transfer money out of your account into the card. You could also use an ATM if you didn't have the phone.
It was a pretty neat technology but at just around the same time Interac debit payments really started to take off and people were much happier to have a card linked to their accounts rather than a card with a balance you could lose. The payments were also pretty slow, so anyone paying for the bus slowed the line down.
I still have my card and reader somewhere and I think it has a few dollars left on it. The last time I looked, many years ago, the only transactions that showed up on the reader were coffee purchases at Tim Hortons.