BA Prepaid Mastercard

[BajiNahid]

Just got the prepaid card through the post this morning, and lo and behold I cant even get it to activate as the app keeps crashing. Secondly, the card expiry date is in December 2022 how is a ~4 month card validity even possible.

[Annetteewan]

I seem to be having similar issues. My card (which expires in December) won’t allow me to top it up. I’ve activated the card, successfully registered my debit card (0.01p taken from my account) but in the top-up tab it says “no debit card was added”. So I’m at a bit of a loss about what to do now.

[Greenpen]

The website app seems to be very slow with adding purchases you can see. Today when trying to buy a £6.95 book it was declined but £27 was showing on the app. Later it did update correctly but the delay is annoying.

[dorowilson]

Fairly useless, I think. It arrived today so I rang BAEC Gold line asking them to confirm I’d get the extra 1500 points from your HFP2022 promotion although the promotion box and details had gone from their website by the time I applied last Sunday. They transferred me to the promotions dept handling the matter where the girl was extremely rude saying it was y fault because so had not phoned them on Sunday because of it. I explained I had messaged you to confirm the promotion was not working as the box had been removed prematurely. I also explained it was not worth bothering with for less than 3000 bonu and asked them to sort it out. I registered the card anyway but the app is awful. I used thr card and it ignores extra points due from the BAEC shopping portal yet with Amex they are recorded immediately from the same retailer and extra Avios instantly credited on the BA site. Some depts of BA are worse than useless.

[Paul B]

Anybody else unsuccessfully able to withdraw from an ATM using this card? I get an error message saying the request will take me overdraw to the amount of my credit balance.

[Skywalker]

Happy I dodged this card. Seems like it’s a lot of hassle for a good few here 😐

[bartas8891]

Hidden fees, applications with multiple bugs, and declined transactions. I am surprised to see HFP recommending products like this. Ehhh card goes straight to the bin.

[buchanan101]

All seem to work fine for me – we will see if the 3,000 Avios are credited properly

[Gosia44]

When can we expect the 3000 to be credited? I spent £500 on this card two weeks ago and still no avios.

[Joe G]

I signed up as I needed to wait out 6 months before I’m eligible for the Barclaycard sign up bonus and it seemed like an easy enough way to get 3000 bonus Avios (though that still hasn’t appeared) and also a way to earn some avios on non AMEX spend in the interim.

I didn’t have any of the issues anyone is reporting and the card worked as it should have but even then I think all the hoops you have to jump through (and I’m anticipating cancellation won’t be easy) the 3000 avios along with poor earning rate probably isn’t incentive in itself to get the card, especially if you already have an Avios Barclaycard.

[Londonsteve]

Has anyone got live experience of foreign currency transactions with this card? I did some test transactions today buying an item of identical price online only a few minutes apart. My Barclays debit card was, as expected, slightly off the interbank rate plus 3%. Curve and the BA Prepaid charged exactly the same amount in GBP, which is confusing because Curve is fee free during working days up to the free FX limit, whereas the BA Prepaid is 1.5% over the Mastercard rate if not purchasing in USD or EUR. Both products use Mastercard.

Does anyone know how you’re billed if you buy something in EUR or USD with the BA Prepaid but have zero balance in your EUR or USD wallet (the poor exchange rate when putting money in these wallets implies a 3% surcharge anyway).

[Paul B]

Do ATM withdrawals (in GPB) count towards the promo’s required £500 spend?

[Londonsteve]

No. This is directly from the T&Cs:

2. For the British Airways Prepaid Mastercard, 1,500 Avios welcome bonus will be awarded to your BAEC account if you have held your Card for 90 days and have spent a minimum of either £500, $500 or €500 in any one currency within 90 days of activating your Card. ATM transactions do not apply.

You’re also limited to a maximum of £300 of ATM withdrawals per month after which 2% fees kick-in. There’s precisely zero benefit to withdrawing money from an ATM in the UK as all of us in the UK have debit cards that offer unlimited fee free withdrawals from any bank or building society ATM. I can only conceive of wanting to withdraw cash while abroad, but I’ll only do this on my BA prepaid Mastercard if the overall exchange rate is equal to that of Curve (or perhaps because I’ve run out limit on Curve for fee free withdrawals during the rolling 30 day limit). ATM withdrawals also do not earn Avios points so it’s better to spend money directly from the card if you can.

[pelicanicecoffeeolaf]

Londonsteve wrote:

No. This is directly from the T&Cs:

2. For the British Airways Prepaid Mastercard, 1,500 Avios welcome bonus will be awarded to your BAEC account if you have held your Card for 90 days and have spent a minimum of either £500, $500 or €500 in any one currency within 90 days of activating your Card. ATM transactions do not apply.

You’re also limited to a maximum of £300 of ATM withdrawals per month after which 2% fees kick-in. There’s precisely zero benefit to withdrawing money from an ATM in the UK as all of us in the UK have debit cards that offer unlimited fee free withdrawals from any bank or building society ATM. I can only conceive of wanting to withdraw cash while abroad, but I’ll only do this on my BA prepaid Mastercard if the overall exchange rate is equal to that of Curve (or perhaps because I’ve run out limit on Curve for fee free withdrawals during the rolling 30 day limit). ATM withdrawals also do not earn Avios points so it’s better to spend money directly from the card if you can.

I topped up and spent over £500, but much of that was automatically converted to € when I performed Euro transactions. Does this mean I will not get the bonus, because I did not do all my spending in only one currency at the point of the transactions? Or will I get it because I always topped up in £ and it was just converted to Euros when necessary?

[Londonsteve]

That’s a good question and I don’t know. None of us are at the stage where this has to be put to the test since 90 days has to elapse from when we ‘think’ we’ve passed the spending threshold. To be on the safe side I would ensure that at least £500, €500 or $500 have been demonstrably spent as the T&Cs could be read such that you need to reach one of these thresholds to receive the bonus. Whether it’s 500 EUR spent by first having topped up the EUR wallet, or allowing the card to do an instant conversion from GBP to EUR at the time of the transaction I don’t think matters.

Have you any impression of how the GBP-EUR spot rate you got for the transaction compared to the (fairly poor) rate being offered to top-up the EUR wallet?

[pelicanicecoffeeolaf]

Londonsteve wrote:

That’s a good question and I don’t know. None of us are at the stage where this has to be put to the test since 90 days has to elapse from when we ‘think’ we’ve passed the spending threshold. To be on the safe side I would ensure that at least £500, €500 or $500 have been demonstrably spent as the T&Cs could be read such that you need to reach one of these thresholds to receive the bonus. Whether it’s 500 EUR spent by first having topped up the EUR wallet, or allowing the card to do an instant conversion from GBP to EUR at the time of the transaction I don’t think matters.

Have you any impression of how the GBP-EUR spot rate you got for the transaction compared to the (fairly poor) rate being offered to top-up the EUR wallet?

I’m not sure but I feel like I might have been getting the same poor rate automatically…

[pelicanicecoffeeolaf]

Personally I won’t have the opportunity now to get to either £500 OR €500. So worst case I miss out on the bonus. At least eventually I can report back if I got the bonus or not under those circumstances. So in the end I may have missed out on getting more Avios for my spending and making more spending progress on other cards instead, and all for a poor exchange rate, great…

[pelicanicecoffeeolaf]

From live chat: “In order to be eligible for Avios bonus, 500 need to be spend in one currency”.

But then the agent went to double check and came back with: “I have double check this now and 500 can be spend in all 3 currencies available in order to be eligible for bonus Avious. As long as total amount was £500 within first 90 days”.

So let’s see if the points come through!

[Londonsteve]

Thanks for getting clarification about that. By extension I wonder what happens if the transaction currency is, say, Swiss Francs, converted to GBP at the point of transaction. Would CHF denominated transactions not count towards the £500 limit? The wording leaves loads of questions.

[Londonsteve]

Is anyone else having trouble with getting ‘one-time authentication’ codes to come through via text message? Twice I’ve been onto them via chat and they cannot find anything wrong. Sporadically I’ll get a code after repeatedly requesting a new one when trying to pay online, then on other transactions I just cannot generate a code at all and have to revert to paying with a different card. It’s incredibly annoying having to go through this each and every time you try to use the card online. Why can’t we be left alone for a few transactions for low value items? Especially since the contactless limits are now ludicrously large and a stolen card could easily be emptied this way. I’m suspecting the back-end IT for this card is pretty poor as Curve OTA messages come through right away, while also allowing transactions to be authorised in the app. Same for Barclays.

[roger]

Has anyone tried or already cancelled this card?
what is the best way to cancel without asking player 2 to call?

[Colin MacKinnon]

I used online chat the other day.

First time: we can’t do it. Phone Mastercard on…..

Second time: we want name, address, BA Executive Club number, date of birth and, I think, something else like my cat’s name! I said: No Way! Are you aware of recent data breaches like IHG?
They said, you’ll have to call.

Third time: I called. They insisted on the above details over the phone. Card cancelled.

Surely all they needed was my card number, name and, perhaps, second part of my postcode, last four numbers of my BA Exec account etc?

Not that happy about their attitude to security.

[Londonsteve]

There’s so much wrong with this beleaguered product a side of A4 would be insufficient to make a list of all the issues…
I suspect the rate of retention after 6 months will be incredibly poor.

[Paul B]

Calling is the easiest route to cancelling this, right?

[cska]

Anyone actually received the 3000 bonus avios on this? Can’t cancel the card until we’ve received it. Met the spend amount a while ago.