Any Australian Dollar Prepaid card recommendations?

Csquare

Does anyone have any positive experiences of using a prepaid cashcard in Australia? We're planning to use a card in place of a debit/credit card (so for over the counter purchases and ATM withdrawals).

All of the review sites we have been looking at seem focused on experiences of cards in Euro countries or America. We have been a bit put off by some reviews describing cards failing, meaning that cash becomes inaccessible.

Some positive stories would be really helpful in making a decision!

NiftyDigits

Kalixa Pay

Try to get someone to refer you, in order to reduce the card fee to £1.95

malid

Just returned from Australia. Not sure why you want to bother with this type of card. We used cash (took some with us and withdrew using Halifax Clarity CC) and credit cards.

PeacefulWaters

malid wrote: »

Just returned from Australia. Not sure why you want to bother with this type of card. We used cash (took some with us and withdrew using Halifax Clarity CC) and credit cards.

Not everybody can get a credit card. Although Clarity should certainly be one of the first options to consider.

Wouldn't you have been better off simply withdrawing cash at the airport ATM on arrival, rather than carrying cash?

Csquare

Thank you for your replies. I appreciate that the Halifax Clarity would be the best option, however the soft check on this site suggested we may not be approved, and we need our credit rating to be in the best possible state due to mortgage renewal coming up later this year. Our existing credit and debit cards have high charges for use internationally. We will be taking some cash, but as we're away for 3 weeks, we do not want to be carrying that amount of cash around with us!

zagfles

Use Kalixa as above then. You don't need a pre-paid in the currency you're going to use - this is bad for various reasons, such as you tend to get a rubbish rate when you load it, and if you have any left over you have to convert again to get it back in GBP.

Get Kalixa in GBP. When you use it they'll convert the currency at the Mastercard rate which is much betterthan any rate you'll get for loading in AUD. I think they have a cash fee but it'll still almost certainly be better value than any AUD card.