A Prepaid Credit Card at the Gas Station

This translation was generated automatically.

Wirecard has some interesting products in the electronic payments market. We’ve already talked here about Vodafone’s NFC cards and, on Bits und so, about Boon, an NFC wallet for Android.

Now there’s a new offer that mainly uses the gas-station and kiosk network operated by Lekkerland for distribution. In other words, next to the wall of iTunes and prepaid top-up cards, there’s also a packet with a prepaid credit card.

The name is maximally generic: mycard2go.

The “anonymous” card can be loaded once with at most €100. Since the card itself costs €9.95, that’s effectively a fee of at least 10%. It’s expensive, but it can make the difference between paying your AWS bill and not paying it if your regular bank has messed something up. Anonymous use is only as anonymous as the mobile number you have to use to activate the card.

Complete the identity-verification process and the limits increase, and reloading becomes possible. The cardholder name printed on the card is “MY CARD”.

The fees aren’t especially low: 4% for cash deposits at a gas station and €1 for a bank-transfer top-up. Non-anonymous cards have a €9.95 annual fee.

The service isn’t free, of course, but it’s a long way from the credit traps of supposedly “fee-free” cards often advertised online. The catch there is usually a very short period in which to pay the bill; otherwise, enormous interest charges apply.

I’m not saying this is the ideal card for everyone, or recommending it. The distribution model is interesting, though, and it could be a backup for travel or an alternative to depositing cash at a bank branch. A literal prepaid card can also serve as pocket money or a fuel card.

The card supports VISA and V-Pay, so it should be accepted at quite a lot of points of sale, including places that previously accepted only the German “EC” card. But that’s another can of worms that may soon be opened in Germany.

Disclosure: Wirecard is one of the payment processors used by the Bits und so mug shop. Paymill is my direct provider for card payments (and has just gone into insolvency, uh-oh).