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I wish general purpose prepaid cards were this easy to obtain and use. I wanted to give my son a prepaid Visa or MasterCard as a present last week so I tried a couple of UK options, but they all seemed to end up with “send your passport to this address” or something else complicated to do with filling in forms and posting them. In the end I didn’t bother: surely there must be an e-money niche for a product with a maximum balance of (say) a hundred pounds that can use e-money legislation to avoid pointless KYC stuff. At Starbucks you just pick up a card from the counter and then load it on the spot. I used the card to pay, it worked first time, was indeed quick, and I liked the way that the receipt reminds you of the balance remaining on the card…
In the US, Starbucks are very nice to people who register their cards and even give them free money, so I logged on to try and register my card but I got an error message that said something along the lines of “Our web developers are a bit new at this and unable to design a site that works on Macs as well as PCs”. So if anyone else has registered, could they let me know what the process was like?
Oh, and there’s another Starbucks card pre-loaded with ten pounds in front of me right now. It’s got your name on it if you’re the first person to comment on this post. Excluding employees of Consult Hyperion, blogmeister Jane and members of my immediate family, as usual.
My opinions are my own (I think) and are presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public.
[posted with ecto]
I think the “pointless KYC stuff” is driven by card scheme requirements rather than regulatory requirements.
Prepaid issuers are thus prevented from offering the instant access which a small (e-money) issuers certificate allows for.
We have a winner!
In order to send your son a prepaid Visa card and skip all KYC stuff – take a look at the WWWCARD at: http://www.wwwcard.co.il
It is a virtual anonymous prepaid Visa card. And most important it’s secure, fast and simple to use.
Sorry to hear you had such a hassle trying to get your son the Visa card as a present.
I sell $100, $50, and $25 Visa gift cards, if you are still interestedin any. I can email the card info for free, or if you want the actual card, you’ll get it still sealed in its orignal Visa packaging so your purchase is 100% secure because only you would know the card info.
I can take Paypal if you aren’t paying with credit card. If you prefer to pay with credit card, let me know and I can send additional instructions. You can check out my excellent eBay feedback score ([URL=http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=strinh808&ssPageName=STRK:ME:UFS]click here[/URL]) and purchase with confidence.
If interested, make me an offer and we can hammer out the details. If given a reasonable offer, I do ty to give discounts to people who buy multiple cards.
Thanks.
strinh808