or online using the card).
Bluebird, issued by American Express, offers a lot more than the average prepaid debit card, and you could load and spend money without paying fees.
Unlike other types of bank accounts, checking accounts do not limit the amount of withdrawals and deposits you could make.
Checking accounts can be set up personally at a local bank branch or online, making them easy and convenient to establish‡.
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It is important to read the card’s terms to know if you can utilize it to get cash back.
However, when you have a prepaid card, such as a Visa prepaid card, you may well be able to use it to get cash return.
Instead, you add money right to the prepaid card account.
When you make purchases with the card, you use the money you loaded.
The quantity shown on the debit card may be the card number, not the bank checking account number.
The checking account number can be found along the bottom of a check, on a bank statement, or via an online banking platform.
If you are struggling to locate your account number, you can contact your bank’s customer support department§§.
The main difference between a prepaid card and a bank debit card is you don’t need a regular bank account to get and use a prepaid card.
Debit Cards Frequently Asked Questions
For those who have a Visa gift card and so are wondering if you can get cash as a result, the short answer is typically not.
To fully answer the question, however, I need to clarify the difference between a Visa® gift card and a Visa Reloadable PREPAID CREDIT CARD.
Both forms of plastic may appear to be the same—both carry the Visa logo and come preloaded with a finite dollar amount to spend.
Thanks to a fresh law that went into effect in 2013, both now also come with a Personal Identification Number (PIN) so they can be swiped as “debit” transactions on Point of Sale (POS) terminals.
Though the two cards are similar, only prepaid cards may be used to get cash from an ATM or to get “cash back” from a merchant.
Read the conditions and terms on the back of your card to know for certain.
- Many stores have their transactions on lock-down where money given back to the buyer for merchandise returned is automatically credited back to the card used to pay for the item.
- The Direct Express® Debit Mastercard® card is a way to get your federal benefits, even though you don’t have a bank account.
- However, PayPal provides an option to transfer your balance into your money, which may be more convenient for some users when compared to a card that pulls from your own PayPal account.
There’s no credit check necessary to get a prepaid credit card, and they’re often available even when you can’t get a bank-account due to a bad banking history.
You load funds onto prepaid cards before using them for purchases.
Generally, you can even work with a prepaid debit card to withdraw cash from ATMs.
A customer uses their credit card to get prepaid cards at the supermarket as a way to rack up gasoline perks from the store or airline miles from the credit card company (or both).
Then, the customer takes the prepaid credit card to an ATM to withdraw cash.
The money is then used to pay off the total amount of the credit card.
With merchants tracking prepaid purchasers, abusers of the system can be found.
For current, active PayPal users, the great thing about these cards is they connect to your PayPal account.
Assuming you have a PayPal account where you regularly keep funds, they may be convenient.
However, PayPal offers an option to transfer balance into your money, which may be far more convenient for some users than a card that pulls from your PayPal account.