Marilyn Bochicchio, the executive director of the new association, said that while the association's agenda does not include explicit lobbying for specific policy recommendations, it does include "education" of lawmakers and regulators, along with consumers and the general media about prepaid cards. "There are people in Congress and the regulatory agencies who are making very important decisions about prepaid cards," Bochicchio said, "so we want to make sure that they understand this industry." In many ways, the association faces a particularly two-edged challenge. On the one hand, the prepaid card industry seeks to remind regulators and the public at large that the industry is much more than gift cards. On the other hand, as it grows, the industry seeks to reassure government officials that it has measures in place to prevent fraud and to make sure that the cards are only used for legitimate purposes.

To reach both those goals, the NBPCA has formed two working groups from among its board members. One will focus on government and the other on consumer and general media education, Bochicchio explained.

The government working group will focus on education and will not engage specifically in lobbying or political support, she said. The group will not fund a political action committee and will instead focus on trying to provide regulators and lawmakers with independent, factual information that they can trust and use when making decisions about the cards.

"We believe that independent and unbiased information can have a strong impact during the policy making or legislative process," Bochicchio explained. "We would lose the advantage of that perspective if we were to endorse a particular position or hire a lobbyist."

The consumer and general media working group will focus on making the public aware that prepaid cards include far more than merely the gift cards they buy at holiday times or for a birthday, she said.

"Too many people associate prepaid cards only with gift cards," Bochicchio said. "When the industry also includes payroll cards, health and employee benefit cards as well as budget and project cards."

The industry believes that prepaid cards have only just begun penetrating the economy at large and that consumers would begin to ask for them if more knew about them. For example, Bochicchio noted, the use of prepaid cards to give employees health benefits without much of the paperwork and record keeping that has marked the health sector in the past is very popular with employees; as would using prepaid cards for other employment benefits.

She pointed out that the additional use of prepaid cards should resonate particularly with credit unions, which have historically focused on member service, something that prepaid cards should facilitate.

Bochiccio was less forthcoming about the industry's relationships with the law-enforcement and anti-terrorism agencies of the U.S. government. The agencies have been among the strongest critics of prepaid cards and they have been rumored to favor strict regulation of the industry designed to keep the cards out of the hands of both terrorists and common criminals. Bochicchio would say only that the organization was in touch with officials from those agencies and that it has put executives from the card networks in touch with the officials to answer their questions about the steps the networks have taken to protect prepaid cards from fraud.