Prepaid currency cards- we(don't)swap

wulliewonka

This is a tale of woe from my recent holiday to Sitges, Spain (lovely place by the way, highly recommended)
Having read MSE, I decided to apply for a WeSwap card. This was to be for spending money as I had already used a Revolut card successfully- good rates, no problems. The WeSwap card apparently also gave good rates for exchange GBP to EUR, and had an additional attraction of £10 freebie when topping up. Card arrived and I started loading my "wallet" as they call it on WeSwap, though the £10 freebie needed some prompting before it turned up. Final 'swap' completed on 07 Sept, flew out on 08 Sept, and went to an ATM on 09 Sept to withdraw 400 Euros- downhill from there! The ATM produced a message "transaction cancelled due to technical issue" and returned my card, no cash or receipt given. "Okay" thinks I and went to try a different bank. "Transaction denied" here. Hmm- so, I checked my WeSwap "wallet" on my phone, to find a deduction of 400 Euros! So, returned to first bank, found an English speaking employee, and explained the situation. Was told I would have to contact my card issuer. Thus started a long series of phone calls and emails during the rest of my holiday, which culminated in the 400 Euros being returned to my account on 19 Sept, the day after I returned to UK! :mad::mad::mad:
It's perhaps needless to say that I am currently in process of terminating my WeSwap account (which is, in itself, not exactly straightforward) and I would caution anyone against using this card- if anything goes wrong, beware- you could be left on holiday with no access to your spending money. Use Revolut instead!

[Deleted User]

That sounds like a bit of a nightmare. I have to say though I've used We Swap a lot abroad (in the states and France) and I've never had a problem with it. Very occasionally it will reject a transaction (e.g. I had it happen in a petrol station in America once) but that's about it.

I do think one thing they should improve on is customer service, though. There should really be a 24/7 number to call that can sort out these problems immediately given the high likelihood that problems will leave people in complicated situations abroad.

Mr_Wangers_Wang

I've had we swap problems too.

I topped up the card with £500 and the transaction failed so I tried again, ensuring I had put my correct details in, the second time round it was successful. I checked my bank and actually £1000 had been taken, it was all very last minute and I assumed it would figure itself out. I jetted off to the States and went to use the card on arrival. It was declined.
I logged on to the app and the money (none of it) hadn't been credited to my account. I emailed customer service and a day or two later nothing had changed.

It was then I tweeted that we-swap was a scam (I've got some 2000 followers) and within an hour @weswap had apologised and the money (all of it) was in my we swap account.

When travelling you need the certainty that money is available when you need it and for me the we swap card couldn't provide that. In all fairness I never topped it up again so maybe it was just a glitch as was explained to me, but I didn't want to take that chance.