Airbnb working on preloaded fee-free $1,000 MasterCard with 10% rewards

I know that’s a lot for one headline, but this really seems to be true. Here’s TechCrunch:

Airbnb appears to be working on an “Experience Card” — a prepaid MasterCard credit card for Airbnb guests to spend up to $1,000 while travelling on most goods and services.

And from the looks of the site we’ve seen, Experience Card would also function as a loyalty card of sorts. Users earn back 10% of each card purchase as a credit towards future transactions on Airbnb.

…The main page for the Experience Card offers users to “Spend like a New Yorker – easily and securely.” The card comes preloaded with $1,000, the site says, but you would only get charged for what is spent on the card, and only after the trip is finished — presumably using the payment details that Airbnb already holds for you.

So if I’m understanding correctly, this is not exactly a prepaid but instead sort of a temporary $1,000 credit card. You get the card from Airbnb, spend away, and then pay Airbnb whatever you spent. Whether or not you can pay back Airbnb with a credit card is not clear, but apparently you’d get 10% back in Airbnb credits on all your purchases. This seems like a weird way of doing things, and maybe this isn’t the final version, but we’ll see.

Are there any limits to this particular MasterCard? Yes, there are:

The card itself is advertised as free to get but there are limits. Airbnb notes in its FAQs (also cached) that while you can use the card for purchases anywhere MasterCard is accepted, the card cannot be used for car rentals, recurring expenses like phone bills, online gambling, hotel spend (!), cash withdrawal at an ATM or cash back at the register, or at Automated Fuel Dispensers at gasoline stations.

No paying for hotels with your Airbnb card! That’s certainly understandable. There are more details in the TechCrunch article if you’re really curious. In addition to the FAQ cache, you can find a cached version of the product page here.