Prepaid debit cards are growing in popularity. They are now so popular that there are more companies offering them than ever before. It can become confusing trying to understand the differences between the cards. With this in mind, you may want to begin your search with a Netspend prepaid debit card. They have everything you want is a prepaid card.
Easy to load at many nearby locations
The options available to load money onto a card are numerous. This is one area where many prepaid debit cards come up short, but not Netspend. They have a huge network of participating stores and businesses that will allow you to add money to your card. These business establishments include various supermarkets and convenience stores across America as well as financial services companies. You can easily check the various locations near you on the Netspend website. You only need to enter your zip code number, and you will get a list of every location near you along with the distance. Because Netspend is very popular, there are more than 100,000 locations across the country.
Other alternative methods to load money at NetSpend.com
A Netspend debit card is a bank account, so there is a bank account number and a routing number. You can use these two pieces of information to have your employer transfer your paycheck directly to your debit card. At tax time, you can have your refund check deposited directly to your card as well. In fact, any payment that can be made to a traditional back account can be directly deposited to your debit card account. If you have a Paypal account, you can transfer money directly to your debit card easily, and there is no fee for this.
Monthly fees
Their monthly fee is a flat $9.95; however, if you have direct deposit from your employer, you can get an account for only $5.00. Even without a direct deposit from your place of work, you can still quality for the $5.00 monthly fee with direct deposit from the Internal Revenue Service with your tax refund. If you only plan on making a few purchases each month, they also have a pay-as-you-go plan. It is $1.00 per signature purchase and $2.00 per pin number purchase. If you use it strictly as a debit card and never sign for a purchase, you will need to keep your total purchases at 10 transactions or less. Otherwise it makes more sense to pay the $9.95 a month.
Payback rewards
This is a program Netspend has that is similar to a cash back program for a credit card. Basically they list a variety of offers for businesses in your local area. Most of these offers are for a 10 percent discount off of your purchase. In order to take advantage of the offer, you must select the offer at the www.netspend.com website. After this, you need only make the purchase, and with a swipe of your debit card, you will earn a 10 percent cash back bonus. All of these offers have expiration dates, but you usually get a month to take advantage of them. Many of them will be for products that you would normally buy anyway, so it only makes sense to take advantage of them. You get credit for the total amount of money rebated to you for a given month at the end of the following month. The amount of money you can receive for your payback rewards can easily be greater than the monthly fees for the Netspend debit card. In this case, your debit card will cost you nothing.
Netspend is as good as or better than other debit cards in most areas. Their flat monthly fees of $9.95 if a bit higher than a few of the other cards; however, with direct deposit, it is one of the cheapest. They have the highest maximum balance seen in the industry At $15,000. They also offer the latest banking apps for smartphones. Regardless of what your final choice for a prepaid debit card is, you should give Netspend consideration. They are clearly one of the best prepaid debit cards on the market.
