At work our benefits scheme includes a prepaid MasterCard that takes money straight out of your salary and pre loads the card. At 70 retailers you are supposed to be able to then get rebates of certain percentages. Wasn’t that interested in the rebates but seemed a good way to put some money aside for Xmas. Apart from the fact that it doesn’t seem to work anywhere! Tried in shops and online retailers but with no success. It is issued through Pure. Anyone had similar? Got a load of money that I can’t seem to get hold of now!
I have a prepaid mastercard, the only thing I have found I can't do with it is hire cars. I beleive some are for electronic (online) transactions only.
If you have a paypal account, try linking it with your card, then you could choose paypal as a payment option.
Surely if it’s a MasterCard you can use it anywhere who takes MasterCard?
You would have thought it would be accepted anywhere for MasterCard. Even tried it at the co op but no luck. Just managed to get an order go through on John Lewis which is showing in the balance so might not all be lost but still takes away the point of having it!
I had one as a currency prepaid (it was a TravelEx or something similar). Seemed to work abroad OK, and you could load it with GBP as well. Never heard of it being declined!
Doesn’t even work for Amazon! This thing is awful!
That’s probably a good thing re: no go on Amazon
Just spunk a load via John Lewis’ on Apple products then sell on unopened and claw it back via PayPal*
*not worth the faff!
Surely if it’s a MasterCard you can use it anywhere who takes MasterCard?
You would think. But ... no.
Pure have a shocking reputation of being a nightmare to use. They are who BT use for the free gift for new accounts, and the reviews online are shocking.
We’ve had a few pre-paid Mastecards over the past few years as safety bonus awards.
All seemed to work fine as long as they were activated properly. Are yours coming to you all set up for you, or do you need to contact the issuer to have them activated?
Same as prepay travel cards, the restriction is anything that reserves an amount on the card, so deposit on hiring a car, hotel deposit, also pay at pump fuel (reserves £99 typically in UK, similar other countries, then adjusts to how much you actually bought).
Not all places will actually block it for these uses but you should avoid using them for these anyway and sometimes those reserves are held against your balance for days or longer until they're cleared and that means less money you can use.
Found some places in US just won't accept them even for normal payments. Also some supermarkets I found see them as debit cards and ask for a ZIP code.
I use an Optimum prepaid Mastercard. Works on Amazon, Paypal, online purchases, any contactless purchases. I'd use my main credit card for car hire and major purchases but for anything else I'm happy with it.
Managed to use the money in John Lewis and lunch in pizza express. Pretty frustrating though. Will cancel it tomorrow. Seems to be Pure that aren’t great not necessarily prepaid MasterCards.
Yes I found the experience very frustrating and spent ages trying to spend the money which required logging into an online portal that would insist on sending verification codes before you could authorise any payments. The system was so slow that the codes never arrived in my inbox before they expired. Very frustrating. Eventually I managed to convert them all into Amazon vouchers and then stopped using the damn thing.
Same as prepay travel cards,
Pure are not even close to the same as any prepaid travel card I’ve ever used.
A list of places that I couldn’t use mine...
Tesco
Morrison’s
Sainsbury’s
(All for groceries not fuel)
Evans instore.
Online with:
Evans
CRC
Wiggle
Amazon
John Lewis
Currys
Wouldn’t link to my paypal either.
Eventually spent inside at John Lewis, but will never have one again. What a pain in the arse.
Have you checked the restrictions for the way yours has been set-up?
FAQs suggest that some may be restricted to specific retailers, presumably because of the cashback.