Prepaid Visa Card for use in Europe (trip, England, credit cards)
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It is so confusing! I am trying to find a visa card that is preloaded/prepaid for my teenage daughter to use on her upcoming trip to London. I basically want her to have one just in case. She will have cash for her lunches (not included in the program she is going on) and incidentals but I wanted her to have a card in case of an emergency but I don't want to give her one of our credit cards because the spending limit is too high. We don't use debit cards with our checking account so that's out. It is very hard for me to find a prepaid Visa card that specifically says it can be used overseas (England in particular). Does anyone have a recommendation? Thanks, Pam
My advice is to open a credit card account with both you and her on it. If the spending limit is too high for you, you can always ask them to lower it and they gladly will. It will help her develop credit as well.
Be careful with prepaid cards,
Once they're lost or stolen, anyone can use them without fear of prosecution.
Without the card numbers, they cannot be replaced. Make sure to notate somewhere in case you need to report.
She will need a chip (and pin) card to use in the UK as using swipe cards isn't available everywhere, not sure if prepaid cards come this way yet so I'm also going to advise to get a cc in her name with a chip and if possible a PIN
Ok I had an interesting experience calling my cc company to get a card in my daughter's name. They said they could issue her one but could not guarantee a set limit. They said because she is a minor and has no income, they have to base it on my (any my husband's) credit worthiness meaning she would get our credit limit. I said no, we want it limited and they told me I could request that but it was not guaranteed. They said after I get the card, I would have to call and try to get the limit reduced and she admitted it was a strange request because most people want an increase in credit limit! What??????? Since I felt I was in the twilight zone with this, I hung up and we decided to open a joint checking account with our daughter at Bank of America and put in a certain limit and let her use a debit card in London (I was advised that a debit card linked to savings would not always work overseas) so hence the need for checking. I hope this works! I just wanted to share my experience here in case anyone else has this issue. I also ordered her some cash (pounds sterling) from Triple A (AAA) and they will send it via the mail so this should take care of it! Thanks for the input!
Pam
I've never heard of a credit card company not lowering a credit limit upon request, and I don't think it's all that uncommon a request. What probably happened is that you were speaking to someone whose entire job is to take credit applications and who really doesn't know anything beyond that (and was likely guessing).
Does the debit card you got her have a chip in addition to a pin?
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