Upgrading From a Prepaid Debit Card to a Charge card – Credit Sesame

The Suze Orman prepaid debit card was discontinued last week, effective July 1, 2021. People who fell for the sales’ pitch and acquired one of the cards are likely now looking for replacement plastic. This is a great time for you to consider re-joining the mainstream realm of credit cards and start experiencing the considerable benefits that credit offers over prepaid debit. Here’s why you should consider upgrading from a prepaid debit card to a credit card-

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They're Cheaper

There are lots of reasons a conventional charge card is better than a prepaid debit card. To begin with, they're cheaper. Don't allow anyone convince you that credit cards are expensive. There are hundreds of charge card offerings that have no annual fee and also the only way you'd ever incur anything similar to a fee could be if you made a decision to make use of the card in such a way that you couldn't pay it in full each month. Then, obviously, you'd have to pay interest. Paying interest could be your choice, not the bank's choice.

The list of fees related to most prepaid an atm card are long and complex. With many offerings you'll pay flat fees each month after which fees associated with your individual usage patterns from the card. You'll pay a charge to activate the credit card, load the credit card with funds, make use of the card at an ATM, replace a lost card, place a phone call to customer service, settle payments online, and also the list goes on and on. You don't pay fees for just about any of those things with many credit cards.

With a few exceptions, you're likely paying some kind of fee or mixture of fees on your prepaid debit card. Don't misunderstand me as I'm not adverse to fees, as long as I’m actually getting some tangible benefit from paying them. Paying a charge to use your own after-tax money is not sensible to me especially when traditional debit cards tied to checking accounts don't have any fees.

Your Credit history Cards and Scores Will Thank You

For those of you who care about your credit reports and credit ratings, your utilization of a prepaid debit card is like a tree falling in the woods-nobody cares and no-one is listening. Prepaid debit card usage is not reported to the credit reporting agencies and does nothing, at all, that will help you build or maintain solid credit reports and credit ratings. Credit card usage, however, is reported to the credit bureaus and responsible utilisation of the account can help your credit reports and scores.

Capacity, Capacity, Capacity

For people that do not know what capacity means as it pertains to credit and prepaid debit cards, it means spending power. Your prepaid debit card is only as useful because the funds that are already loaded. That means unless you use the card for local and modest spending activity, you're going to have usability problems.

You won't encounter the spending limit issue with charge cards since many a credit card has thousands of dollars of capacity. This will permit you to reserve rooms in hotels, rent cars, make large purchases and function much more efficiently without needing to worry about what money you've at your disposal.

The counterargument is that the limited capacity of a prepaid debit card will limit your spending and you out of trouble of credit debt. That's absolutely true, but it's still not really a reason to be frightened of using a credit card. Prepaid debit card providers suggest that the budgetary controls of the products are grounds for their services however the value downside simply isn't there.

Fraud Proof

Finally, if someone steals your charge card and uses it fraudulently you won't need to emerge from pocket by even one dollar. The Fair Credit Billing Act (“FCBA”) caps your liability on credit card scams to no more than $50. All four of the credit card networks offer zero fraud liability policies over the FCBA protections. Prepaid an atm card do not have exactly the same fraud protections.