Hipsnip

Pre-paid credit cards

Pre-paid credit cards: what a cool concept; I mean, it’s amazing that online merchants and the banking system in general need to leave it up to the credit card companies to come up with a proper way to move money around. Too bad you need to acquire debt to do it.

But with pre-paid cards, you can interact with online merchants and most other services as if you had a “real” credit card. There are some minor differences: for example, some cards cannot be used at pumps and need to be run through the machine inside the gas station. Also, if you are hoping to use these for gambling sites, you’re out of luck: most won’t support it.

But for other types of purchases, like Amazon, your domain names or a pro account on Flickr, these cards are just what the doctor ordered. For the anonymity-minded among us, they also represent a great way to make anonymous purchases.

The two best cards (or so I hear) are the “Prepaid Travel Mosaik MasterCard” from the Bank of Montreal and the “VISA Gift Card” from RBC. I have done a little research and concur that these two offer the most flexibility and features for the lowest price. They also have contracts that are not quite as sneaky as some of the others out there.