$ and Euro prepaid credit cards

[wamadeus]

Remembering a discussion we had a while ago about prepay credit cards, I have discovered these two sites.

http://www.caxtonfxcard.com

http://www.fairfx.com

They offer prepaid credit cards in US dollars and euros, and don't charge fees for transactions in those currencies, which even most standard UK credit cards do. Given that most sites charge in US dollars this may well save folks some money. Both sites state that the cards can be used online.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Definetly not a merchant banker.

Wamadeus

[BillShipton]

Sounds ideal for Splosh Downloads.

[Lizzie_Claymore]

I must admit that I'd never heard of these.

Surely you must still lose out on currency conversion costs when you pre-load the card in the first place? If so, I'm not clear what the advantage is as all you seem to be doing is moving the currency conversion cost from the time of purchase to a time before purchase. Am I missing the point? Is there another advantage that I've not spotted here?

[driversoft]

The advantage seems to be threefold - the conversion rate when loading the card seems to be the best available - at least that's their claim, and the figures on their website seem to validate it. The ease with which the cards can be topped up - apparantly via SMS - also scores well, as does the fact that under most other ways of accessing foreign currencies you pay some sort of arbitrary charge each time (in addition to the greater conversion rate). Nothing's free in life, but the cards seems to be the cheapest way yet of spending abroad (or indeed on the web where charges are in $ or Euro).

Probably of little financial benefit (apart from the ease of topup, and the safety of limiting potential fraudulent losses to the funds on the card) for the odd monthly Splosh purchase though - but I can certainly see savings on bigger ticket items. The downside presumably (where you don't receive the goods immediately, such as web purchases), is that whilst they're a "Mastercard", you probably don't get any of the purchase protection benefits of a conventional Mastercard (I'll bet they're treated as cash transactions), so one company foreclosure after you've paid for, but before you've received your big ticket item could easily wipeout any potential savings.