topic Re: How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards? in Personal Finance

How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards?

BronzeTrader — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 02:54:14 GMT

These cards seem are very popular. But I've heard some folks complaining about not able to use them. I just like to hear if it is really risky to get into those....

Re: How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards?

AverageJoesCredit — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 02:56:51 GMT

Apparently not as good as the Chocolate ones

Re: How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards?

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 03:15:43 GMT

MyFico forum is probably not the right group to really dive into the value of these. Rules and all!

Re: How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards?

CreditCuriosity — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 03:52:32 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
MyFico forum is probably not the right group to really dive into the value of these. Rules and all!

Agree other forums are better suited to discuss as someone is bound to possibly cross the line.

Re: How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards?

Moneyklutz — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 05:06:32 GMT

@AverageJoesCredit wrote:
Apparently not as good as the Chocolate ones

Strawberry...

Go pink or go home

Re: How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards?

K-in-Boston — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 05:12:51 GMT

I'll pretend that I'm oblivious to outside factors and just say that the cards are horrible because you get negative rewards. If you want to pay a fee for a card, consider the Starwood Preferred Guest from American Express with positive rewards.

Re: How Good are Vanilla Prepaid Cards?

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 19:35:15 GMT

@K-in-Boston wrote:
I'll pretend that I'm oblivious to outside factors and just say that the cards are horrible because you get negative rewards. If you want to pay a fee for a card, consider the Starwood Preferred Guest from American Express with positive rewards.

Interesting viewpoint! The cards don't get negative rewards, just zero rewards. If you have a $500 Vanilla Prepaid card, you can spend $500 on it, and get 0 rewards. (There are some varients, like the 5back version, which gives 5% at a vanishingly small number of stores).

The "negative reward" is in the intial purchase, where you pay around $4.95 for the card. Now whether that is truly negative or not depends on those other factors!

But in short the major reason against Vanilla cards is that they cannot be used for certain transactions at Walmart. And for a lot of us, I mean people, there aren't any alternatives to Walmart for these transactions.