Many branches find discount shopping cards a very useful recruitment and retention tool.
Due to the popularity of these cards with members, UNISON reviewed the scheme and in 2012 UNISON negotiated a new discount shopping card called the UNISON Prepaid Plus MasterCard® card with Union Income (a sister company of UNISONProtect) as our nominated supplier.
This card offers members cashback at over 40 major retail partners. There are no credit checks when members apply.
The UNISON Prepaid Plus card is different to credit or debit cards because members load money before spending, rather than paying for it afterwards.
This means there is less chance of going over budget, and members can use it to pay wherever they see the MasterCard Acceptance Mark – that includes over 32 million outlets worldwide.
The scheme is very advantageous. There is an admin fee of £1.95 per month which is easily recoverable from the cashback members earn, and this scheme involves no cost to the branch.
UNISON sent round details of our change in supplier to all branches and regions in February/March 2012.
This confirmed that Lealta, our previous supplier, would continue to support the old scheme so that all existing Lealta cards could continue to be used normally by members until their expiry date.
Branches that already had contracts with Lealta at that time were therefore advised to continue using the Lealta cards until the end of the contract they had with Lealta, but not to renew or enter into any new contracts with Lealta as they were no longer our nominated supplier.
We understand Lealta may have recently been contacting UNISON branches to ask that they renew or enter into new agreements with them.
Please note we have no official link with Lealta: our relationship with Lealta has ended.
Lealta were advised of this back in 2012 and we have again reminded Lealta of our agreement in light of their continuing contact with our branches. Branches wishing to use UISON Discount Shopping cards as a recruitment and retention tool should do so through our nominated supplier. Branches should not be renewing or entering into new contracts with Lealta.
If any branches have taken such action recently please could you contact Margaret Reid on m.reid@unison.co.uk.