Ryanair and Mastercard prepaid cards - a cautionary note

hueligan

In order to avoid paying Ryanair's exhorbitant card handling fee I obtained a mytravelcash prepaid Mastercard. My mistake was to buy a euro card instead of an all currency card. When I came to pay for the flights the cost in GBP was £456 which I paid using the prepaid card (having loaded £500 onto it). However, I then discovered that Ryanair's conversion rate for GBP to Euro was 1.19. This meant I ended up paying £498 for the flights with the prepaid card when if I had paid with any other card it would only have cost £492 (456 + 36 handling fee). The moral of the story is make sure you buy an all currency prepaid card. They do charge a small commission as opposed to the euro only card but it would have only equated to 50p or so.

stilltheone

hueligan wrote: »

In order to avoid paying Ryanair's exhorbitant card handling fee I obtained a mytravelcash prepaid Mastercard. My mistake was to buy a euro card instead of an all currency card. When I came to pay for the flights the cost in GBP was £456 which I paid using the prepaid card (having loaded £500 onto it). However, I then discovered that Ryanair's conversion rate for GBP to Euro was 1.19. This meant I ended up paying £498 for the flights with the prepaid card when if I had paid with any other card it would only have cost £492 (456 + 36 handling fee). The moral of the story is make sure you buy an all currency prepaid card. They do charge a small commission as opposed to the euro only card but it would have only equated to 50p or so.

Not even close. It would have been closer to £13.50. You really did not do your research.

Multi-Currency Card: 2.99% for GBP transactions

In fact, the card charges 2.99% for any transaction.

Still, £13.50 is a lot less than £42.