What is Visa? and What is a Visa Pre-paid card?
Visa, is one of the largest companies world wide that backs credit and debit cards They are a European payment system that is wholly owned, controlled and operated by more than 4000 members (banks, and other service providers) from 36 countries across Europe.
Visa cards are issued by a wide variety of different banks and other lenders, but are backed by Visa so that as long as the Visa Logo is shown in a shop, that shop will accept any card with that logo on it.
More European businesses use Visa than any other electronic card based payment method, and in addition to millions of retailers across Europe who accept Visa, many banks will allow you to use their ATM machines to draw money from your card too.
A Visa pre-paid card, is a type of card that you pre-load with money. Instead of it being linked to your bank account like a Visa debit card is, or providing you with credit like a Visa credit card does, the amount you can spend with a pre-paid card, is limited by how much money you have already loaded onto it.
A pre-paid card looks just like a regular debit or credit card, and has all the same features on it like card number, expiry date, and security code. This means that anywhere that you can use a debit or credit card to pay for something, you can do the same with a pre-paid card because it works in almost exactly the same way. The only time this is not the case, is if you want to use a card as security before you pay for something – so for example, you can’t use a pre-paid card to run up a tab in a hotel, or pay for petrol at a card pump. The reason for this is that because the system doesn’t know how much you will spend before it begins, it can’t check to see if there’s enough money there first.
There are many different types of pre-paid card, some are designed for use online and with mail order and phone purchases, others are designed more for use abroad when you’re travelling, and others again are designed for young people where you can monitor what they’re spending and control things a bit. There are also disposable gift card types too which are designed a bit like a gift card for a shop, only you’re not anything like as limited to where you can spend it. These aren’t re-loadable, once you’ve spent the money on them, you throw them away.
Visa Backed Prepaid Cards
Virgin Prepaid Travel Money Card