Prepaid cards seem to be breeding like rabbits around the world and every single one is different from the others in terms of charges, features and general useability.
Rather than trawl through all the cards that would pay me to recommend them to you as the majority of card comparison sites do, I'm just going to go through those that are 'best' here and tell you why that they're the best so that you'll be able to choose which is best for your circumstances.
At the moment there are basically three types of card available:
- Maestro cards;
- Visa Electron cards; and
- Mastercard debit cards.
All of the Maestro cards seem to charge you for the card and a number of them charge you an annual fee too for a card which is very limited in functionality. Therefore, it isn't worth considering these any further.
At the moment there seem to be only two Visa Electron cards available which is a shame as it's a very useable card. The Post Office card is free to get, £5 to renew and costs £1.50 per UK withdrawal, £2 overseas; if you get the Euro or Dollar cards their '0%' commission works out at around 3.5% otherwise it's 2.75% when you use, say, the dollar card in Europe. There's a 1.5% charge to add money to the sterling card. UreLife costs £12.95 on application, £9.95 on renewal two years later and costs 50p per withdrawal in the UK; they don't state any of the charges for use abroad so I'm rather wary of it and suspect that you could get an unpleasant surprise. For use on holiday, the best Visa Electron card for overseas use is the Post Office card and has the additional advantage that you can get it over the counter in a Post Office or apply online; if you wanted to use it in the UK too then the UreLife card will be cheaper. Both these cards can be used to withdraw cash and to buy things in shops and online; it's cheaper to use them to make purchases than it is to get cash.
The range of Mastercard debit cards is vast. The majority of these cards have a monthly or annual fee which makes those ones very expensive which is a shame as this is the most useful of the three types of prepaid card currently available. The ICE card is free to issue and renew, £1.75/€3/$3 to withdraw cash and charges 4% for all currency conversions. At the moment you can get the FairFX free if you load £500 or more onto either their Euro or dollar cards (it's £9.95 for a three year card otherwise) and costs £1/€1.50/$2 to withdraw cash (there's no transaction charge for purchases); card renewals are £6 for FairFX (it's a three year card). Unless you plan on making a lot of cash withdrawals, the ICE card is the one to go for.
So, which of all of these cards should you get?
- For use as a holiday backup, the ICE Travellers Cashcard is the clear winner because it's free to issue and renew, £1.75 per cash withdrawal and 4% to convert the money to euros/dollars. You can top-up online by credit/debit card or in their branches with cash, cheque or credit/debit card. Being a Mastercard, you could get cash over the counter in bank branches where there aren't any ATMs and there are no running costs so you could get one now and just leave it in your case for the next holiday. The only downsides are that it takes two weeks to issue and you don't get any interest on the money you put in it.
- In second place comes the Post Office card because it's free to issue, £5 every two years to renew, £2 per cash withdrawal and about 3.5% to convert the money to euros/dollars. You can top-up the card with cash or credit/debit card in a Post Office branch or by phone or online with a credit/debit card. The big plus point of this one is that you can get it immediately from a Post Office branch so if you're looking for a last minute card before you head off on holiday, this is the one to go for.
For true emergency use the Post Office card comes into its own as you could get someone to get one for you in the Post Office and post/courrier it to you whilst you were on holiday.
You should consider these cards only as backup to your normal credit/debit cards.
