pay as you go? 26 January at 5:27AM edited 30 November -1 at 12:00AM in Credit Cards 12 replies 717 views

NicoA.hrens

Good morning,


I'm new to this board and plan to use credit cards in the form "pay as you go".
1. is this the correct board for and
2. has anybody positive or negative experiences with these cards?


Best regards from
Germany

zx81

We don't have such a term in the UK.

Perhaps better to search on a German site.

mt99

Could you tell us what 'pay as you go' is?

moneywow1

I assume he means pre-paid cards?

Or paying money onto the card before spending it?

kuratowski

Or it could be paid in full (on receipt of each statement) - so never carrying a balance. A lot can get lost in translation.

NicoA.hrens

Thank you for answering me. I meant with "pay as you go", load credit on the card to use it, but you can't spend more than you topped up before


You can top up those cards on several gas stations or buy redeem vouchers to top it up online e.g. (at least in my area).


Oh, I thought these sort of credit cards were "normal" outside of Germany.
In my opinion these cards are clever for online shopping. You needn't to name your own banking connection for the payment ;-)

zx81

They're not a very clever choice for online shopping, as it's your own money which is at risk.

With a credit card, it's the bank's.

Migster

zx81 wrote: »

They're not a very clever choice for online shopping, as it's your own money which is at risk.

With a credit card, it's the bank's.

True, and I'd always use a credit card myself, but you can top the card up with the amount you intend to spend, so there's never any balance left on the card when you're not using it.

afis1904

You don't really need those sort of cards in the UK because UK debit cards have a sixteen digit card number just like credit cards meaning you can use them for the same sort of shopping.

There are some cards which you can load money onto but they're usually for spending abroad (Revolut, TransferWise) or for children.

jennifernil

We have travelled extensively in Germany and have found that the type of credit cards we use in U.K. are not common in Germany. The use of bank cards is much more common.

VISA and MasterCard CCs are now being more widely accepted in Germany in recent years, even Lidl and Aldi there are taking them.

Nico.....there are some drawbacks with the preloaded cards. Other than having to fund them up front, should you use a pay at pump petrol pump they will automatically reserve something like 100 euros from your balance (possibly as well as your actual purchase) and it can take several days for this to be released and available.

It has also been reported that these prepaid cards often do not work at toll stations, such as on the French Autoroutes.

NicoA.hrens

it could be these credit cards are for children (target group) to load money on it. I don't see any drawbacks on these cards. In the last decade I made positive experiences with these top up cards for online shopping. My big mistake was to care this "system" online, that happened the card company shut the account; maybe I didn't load new money on it for the year's fee.



But I think what for children are good, could be for grown ups good as well :-)


It depends on the intentions you want to use these cards, my intentions are online shopping, generally.