No fees on Mastercard Prepaid, says MOL.

We had Michael O Leary on the radio here (  ROI, RTE Radio 1 ) on Saturday for 50 minutes, giving an interview to Marian Finucane.  He said that in the new year Ryanair would start processing "Mastercard Prepaid" on a "No  Fees" basis. Also said possibility of more European destinations from Knock and Kerry with the wind-down of Shannon.P.S. You might be able to get this interview as a podcast on RTE in a few days time.

Official announcement today :

http://www.ryanair.com/en/news/gen-en-301109

To be honest I have no idea where to get these prepaid Master cards in Belgium...

Neither have I ...
Not at Dexia, nor at BNP Paribas Fortis, I have called them to make sure. And I can't find another bank that offers it on its website. Western Union doesn't do it in Belgium either, it seems.
If somebody can help ?

Entropay gives you a real plastic prepaid mastercard för 4.99 including worldwide delivery. Dunno if it will work with ryan though...

Some of the options for getting a Mastercard prepaid in Ireland have quite a lot of charges , Payzone.ie = Min€3.50 to load card, 2.9% of ammount spent, and €3.50 a month after 3 months if the card is not used "Dormancy charge" People could also look here   -- http://public.neteller.com/content/global/cards_index.htm. Would like to see if someone can do a ( fee free ) booking with Mastercard Prepaid from Entropay.  The people at Entropay don't yet know if Ryanair will be accepting their Mastercard prepaid card.

After an hour or so of surfing the net I`ve registered fo a pre paid Mastercard.

Most of them have charges either for the card, monthly fees or for transactions.

The one of chosen is with Phones 4 U.

It`s £10 fee for the card but then it should be free to use with no monthly fee to pay.

I suppose I`ll keep the Electron though as some other budget airlines still accept it without charges.

I wonder where the goalposts will move next???

Regards

Joe Bloggs

Well, it looks like this is the end for my visa electron card. Will take the advice of Joe Bloggs and make that one off payment at phones4u for the pre-paid Mastercard.
Any method to avoid losing £10 per transaction.

trollhattan wrote:Entropay gives you a real plastic prepaid mastercard för 4.99 including worldwide delivery. Dunno if it will work with ryan though...

Thanks Trollhattan. I have ordered my plastic prepaid Master Card. Curious if it will work. As soon as I have the card delivered to Belgium, I will post my experiences here. Looks like Entropay is helping us once again :-) ...!

I hope there are some € 0,01 flight deals over the next few weeks. As I still have GBP 2,61 on my Visa Electron card, I might do some 261 more flights...! :-)

The Escape card seems a good choice, no monthly fees or transaction charges. No top up fees on some methods.

http://www.compareprepaid.co.uk/reviews/escape-card.html


Much better than the cards I looked at previously: http://www.what-prepaid-card.co.uk/features/compare-cards-prepaid.html

Still got 1 month left with my visa electron.

Found this alternative from Goyada:
Issue fee 100 sek and recharge fee 20 sek

This really is a complete disgrace. After relentlessly promoting Electron for years, forcing millions to open up entirely seperate bank accounts just to avoid the extortionate and disproportionate fees, they suddenly pull the rug from under our feet and tell us to apply for a pre paid mastercard. Outrageous. How long before they switch to another free payment scheme in the not too distant future leaving passengers with another obselete card in our wallets?
We need a level playing field here and as loyal fans/passengers we deserve some reward for this loyalty. Why not have a card transaction fee that actually REFLECTS THE ACTUAL CHARGE? By that I mean no free methods, just fair ones. If you want to pay by credit card, fine, just pay the relevant processing fee. Why should ryanair or any company for that matter be allowed to make a profit on the customer's chosen payment method?
I think ryanair are testing the patience of their loyal fare paying passengers severely here.

You can get a Pre pay mastercard at
more4less.org.uk
It costs £9.99 and if you sign up for the other services you get up to 30% off your utility bill by way of
a 5% cashback everytime you shop at our partner stores in the UK
even on all your food and petrol at sainsburys
plus Argos boots homebase etc
Check out full details at the web site

Note that Pre-payment cards in the UK do not get protection for purchases under the consumer credit act and are not covered by the FSA compensation scheme. If the bank issuing the card goes bust then you will loose all the money accrued on the card. This no doubt lowers the costs; but, is far from clear from most of the bumph on most of these cards.

There are some prepaid cards that offer purchase protection but you need to be a uk resident. Here are the ones i have found so far


http://www.compareprepaid.co.uk/purchase-protection.html

Has anyone done some research in UK for the cheapest Maestro Prepaid?

There are only a few main providers of prepaid maestro cards, here are the best ones

Tuxedo - variable tariffs available
http://www.compareprepaid.co.uk/prepaid-cards/credit/tuxedo-prepaid-maestro-card.html

White Eagle prepaid card - Fixed monthly fee of £3.95
http://www.compareprepaid.co.uk/reviews/white-eagle-prepaid-card.html

Splash Plastic - Pay as you go option - charge 2.5%
http://www.compareprepaid.co.uk/reviews/splash-prepaid-card-review.html

you are best off sticking to Prepaid MasterCards

You could Neteller. Neteller is a e-wallet that works as a prepaid mastercard.

you could but there have been problems with the application process and their back end system, we have received several complaints from people using the Altair backend.

Entropay have officially announced that their card suits Ryanair travellers.