Emily Utton, has been appointed Senior Relationship Manager and Alex Reddish has joined the business as Relationship Manager. The appointments round off a rapid period of growth for the Raphaels Bank Card Services team which has tripled in size in just 18 months.

The team's expansion is in response to increasing demand for Raphaels' leading edge and innovative prepaid card programmes, including the recently launched RAC membership loyalty card.

Emily Utton has joined Raphaels Bank after five years at Paypoint, where she was an Account Manager, looking after the energy sector. Prior to that, she was Account Manager at the Home Retail Group. Although Emily is new to prepaid, she has extensive experience as a relationship manager in the payments industry. Joining Emily, Alex Reddish has joined the team as Relationship Manager, moving after two years as Relationship Manager at Ukash. He has a long family history in prepaid and did his final dissertation, at Roehampton University, on the future of prepaid.

Raphaels Bank has also moved existing key talent into new positions within the Card Services team. The role of Business Development Manager held by Emily Baum has now expanded to include Marketing. Emily has been with Raphaels Bank for over a year and prior to that was a Prepaid Programme Manager for five years, specialising in loyalty. Emily owned her own retail business for seven years, ahead of joining the prepaid market, bringing a valuable mix of skills as these three areas start to play a large part in the growth of the payments market moving forward.

Janet Johnston has expanded her role as Head of Operations to include Relationship Management. Janet has been with Raphaels for three years, initially heading up Operations. Susan Jordan is now Head of Compliance and Legal, moving from Head of Programme Delivery. With six years' experience at Raphaels and previous experience as a Senior Risk Manager for the American Express Prepaidid team, Susan is a natural fit for the expanding Card Services team.

Andy Downes, General Manager, Card Services at Raphaels Bank comments, "As a leading player in the European prepaid card market, it's essential that we continue to invest in the best talent to focus on our growth in this sector and drive innovation. We are now working with some major global brands to create attractive schemes that benefit our partners and their customers. This is a very exciting period in our growth and with the expertise of this newly expanded team, Raphaels Bank Card Services is set to go from strength to strength."