Protected Your Prepay Credit Card
Don’t like the idea of carrying lots of cash around with you? Even less comfortable with a standard credit card in your pocket due to the risk that you’ll get carried away spending more than you can afford? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then a type of prepay credit card – called a prepaid card – may be of interest to you.
Staying in control of your spending
It doesn’t matter how disciplined a person you are, it is can often be easy to slip into debt.
Typically the conventional credit card is one of the major sources of such debt because they are so easy to use and much of modern life demands a piece of plastic for payment rather than cash or credit etc.
So, it may be nice to have the convenience of plastic but without the risk of running up debts that you subsequently struggle to deal with.
The prepay card approach:
On the internet there are now specialist providers of these prepaid cards. Their cards offer the convenience and additional security that comes with plastic but without the risk of you getting drawn into runaway spending.
Despite often being referred to as a prepay credit card, these are not credit cards at all. They work on a very simple principle:
• You put money onto the card through any one of several methods such as direct bank transfer or via a PayPoint available in many shops and other outlets;
• You use the card as normal – but you cannot spend more than the maximum amount you have preloaded onto the card.
This puts you firmly in control. It may even prove an ideal way of giving children spending cash if they’re on a trip or just going out.
If the card is stolen or lost, it is PIN protected. You can typically cancel the card immediately with a single phone call. Even if the PIN had been discovered and the card used, you could not lose more than the maximum amount you had loaded onto it.
A managed debt-avoidance structure
Some specialist providers of prepay credit cards may also be able to offer e-banking accounts that link to the card, giving you flexibility in managing and dealing with your finances on a day-to-day basis and potentially helping you stay firmly in the driving seat in terms of your monthly budget.