Tags: benefits of travelling, currency cards, prepaid travel cards, travel cards, travel money

Travelling can be so much more convenient when you do not have to worry about the dangers of carrying too much cash when you are in a foreign land.

Luckily for most travellers, there are prepaid credit cards that they can actually get before they travel.  With these cards, you do not have to worry about having too much or too little cash while travelling.

A prepaid credit card is not really a credit card.  A credit card allows you to make your purchases within the credit limit that you have on your card.  You are, in effect, borrowing money from your credit card when you use it during your travels.  With a prepaid card, you are actually using your own money.  When you get your prepaid credit cards, you pre-load them with your own money.  As you use it for your purchases, the amount of your purchase is deducted from your account right there and then.

Most of these prepaid credit cards are issued under international card networks like Mastercard, Visa Electron, AmEx, and Maestro.  Major establishments all over the world accept these prepaid credit cards as payment modes.

You can easily get your own prepaid credit card.  There are no credit checks when you apply for these prepaid credit cards. You can have bad credit and still be able to get a prepaid credit card precisely because you are actually going to have to put in money first into the card account before you can use it for any purchase.  All you need to do is to fill out an application form and present any form of identification with a valid UK address.

There are some cards that you can apply and get approved for online.  Minimal application fees are charged when you apply for these prepaid credit cards.  While some prepaid credit cards have monthly fees, most of the more popular prepaid credit cards do not charge regular fees and allow you to pay service fees only when you use your card.  There are no late payment fees or interest payments that you have to worry about with these cards.

One of the outstanding features of these prepaid credit cards is that they are available in multiple currencies and usually have excellent exchange rates which ae much better than what you would expect on the highstreet.

The NETELLER Net+ Prepaid Card is an excellent example of such a prepaid card as it is issued in 8 currencies – GBP, USD, EUR, CAD, SEK, DKK, AUD and JPY – and is free to buy and load. There are a number of other currency cards which are worth considering as well.

Remember that you have to pre-load your card with real money before you can use it.  If you are abroad and you need more funds, you can make arrangements to load your card from wherever you are.