Let me start this post with an important point. I do not recommend anything in here as a regular manufactured spending strategy, Paypal has a big history of shutting people down so don’t mess with them. I also did a search of our forum, don’t think I’m killing any deals.
When I was signing up for FT4RL2 today, I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. I’m not sure this is a Tagging Miles WTLW kind of situation, but I don’t remember ever reading about this before, so I thought I’d share.
As I was checking out, I saw a little note that said “Paypal now accepts prepaid cards”. Wut? So I did some digging, and Paypal has indeed been taking prepaid cards since November of last year. Like I said, this is NOT good for MS, but I think it is useful if you have some leftover money you need to liquidate off a prepaid card for a legitimate purpose.
Adding a prepaid card to your wallet is simple – you just add it like any other credit/debit card – it’s just a separate tab. What I did notice was that I wasn’t allowed to use my card when my Paypal balance could cover the cost of what I was paying for. But when I increased the cost to something more than what I have in my account, it allows me to use my prepaid card to cover the rest.
So is this useful? I think it is – I sometimes check out using Paypal and if I need to liquidate a couple of bucks remaining on a prepaid card I think this would be a nice and easy way to do it. My plan going forward is to use Paypal to liquidate the 10 or 15 bucks I sometimes have leftover on a card on a legitimate purchase. AKA, how I think Paypal intends prepaid cards to be used. Still, I literally just saw this today, so I’d love to hear if people have any experience!
Great to see you going FT4RL — We should definitely catch up! (I may have been Welcome to 2008… lol).
No – i didnt expect this post from “asthejoeflies”.
Aww sorry to disappoint. Just something I was genuinely surprised by
i cant think of an online merchant that takes cc but not prepaid. thus this is mostly useless.
You cut me deep bro! Thanks for reading.
sorry not meant as an insult, i was more so wondering if i was simply missing something.
No offense taken, my comment was more of a joke. 😛 You’re definitely right, it doesn’t contribute much. I just had no idea, pinged another friend in the game who had no idea, so thought maybe someone else might benefit. But maybe my friend and I are just kinda out of the loop, haha.
Jonathan is correct that it’s “mostly” useless given you can only make payments to merchants, but there are a few limited cases where it is useful:
– Using Kiva as you can only go through Paypal
– Buying something you may return later – If you pay with a prepaid card and return something later, the money will go back to your prepaid card meaning you need to keep that card around – If you pay with Paypal, the money goes back to your Paypal account.
That said, if you do switch prepaid cards regularly, you’ll eventually have a hold on your account and they’ll ask you to try to not use so many cards as they have to go through a card verification process on their end each time. I have no issue with that so that’s fine – I mainly use my US Bank FlexPerks for Kiva anyway.
Why would anyone ever carry a PP balance? Any balances get immediately transferred to my bank account – why give PP the float?