topic Prepaid Debit Cards in SmorgasBoard

Prepaid Debit Cards

Inscorehell — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 22:57:04 GMT

Why is it that many online sites allow you to pay with a debit card tied to a checking account but not with one that isn't? Don't they both preauthorize and set aside funds?

Re: Prepaid Debit Cards

coreysw12 — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 21:33:32 GMT

In the case of things that have recurring payments, I think a lot of places don't like prepaid cards because they tend to run out of funds fairly quickly and never get recharged again. And especially for things that have a free trial, they want to know that they can charge the card as soon as you forget to cancel the trial before it ends. Perhaps they also don't like the anonymous factor - you could claim to be anyone when using a prepaid card.

There also used to be a problem where people would use empty prepaid cards in machines that didn't immediately "dial out" for a credit card authorization, such as some vending machines. The machine would just trust that they could charge your card, until it called out a batch of authorizations at the end of the day. Now I think a lot of those are programmed to auto-decline prepaid card numbers.

Re: Prepaid Debit Cards

Inscorehell — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 21:54:39 GMT

Thanks for the informative reply. I have credit cards and a prepaid debit card for things I want to purchase for cash without having bank account info stored somewhere. It seems safe for them to accept the prepaid card for one time purchases.

Re: Prepaid Debit Cards

coreysw12 — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 22:02:54 GMT

If you have Citi or Capital One cards, you could try using the virtual account number feature to generate a credit card number that isn't tied to your account information. The added bonus is you can close the virtual account number (say, if someone keeps trying to charge your card and you don't want them to) without having to close your actual account. Other banks may offer that as well, I'm only familiar with Citi and Cap1.

Re: Prepaid Debit Cards

Inscorehell — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 22:08:10 GMT

Interesting. Thank you very much.