My previous blog post about the Ruby Card prompted some discussion about the benefits of prepaid cards when the fees associated with administering the card can be very high. On most of the cards, you pay to load your card with money and you pay when you make a purchase.
The Dublin City Gift Card recently came to my attention. This Prepaid MasterCard was launched on December 02 2009 by the Dublin City Business Association and is operated by Zapa through MasterCard. This card makes a great alternative to the existing prepaid cards as it does not have any surcharges or monthly fees.

The card can be purchased at Ticketmaster kiosks in St Stephen’s Green, Dundrum and Jervis shopping centres, and also at a booth in the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre. Late last year we reported that Ryanair were dropping Visa Electron as their free payment method and replacing it with Prepaid Mastercard. At the time there were no free prepaid cards in the Irish Market but the Dublin City Card will allow consumers to avoid transaction charges when booking flights with Ryanair.

Dave

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• Ruby Card - A Prepaid MasterCard launches in Ireland
• Word on the Web - 04/12/2009

Ryanair charge a €5 payment fee per person per flight when you book on their website. They only way to avoid this charge was to pay with Visa Electron. This card type was their free payment method offering. Ryanair  have now dropped Visa Electron in favor of prepaid Mastercards. There are currently no free-to-use prepaid MasterCards so anyone buying a Ryanair flight now will include some type of card payment


Moneybookers following in the footsteps of PayPal have launched a new MasterCard-branded prepaid card. The card will allow customers to access funds in their Moneybookers e-wallet to shop both online and offline. The card also offers parents the possibility to load money on a card for their children.


eBay are predicting that next Monday 7th December will be Irelands busiest online shopping day, with a massive 112,000 people expected to log onto ebay.ie. Based on their research they expect that next Monday a Christmas present will be bought every 30 seconds on ebay.ie.



In our Word on the Web post for 23/10/2009 we mentioned the SquareUp the new business from Twitter founder Jack Doresy. SquareUp has now gone live for trial customers. SquareUp does not require any contracts or monthly fees and card payments can be accepted through a device that connects through the audio jack. Receipts can be sent via email or viewed online.

Dave

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If you liked this article then you can:

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Related Blog Posts:

• Word on the Web - 22/11/2009
• Word on the Web - 03/11/2009
• Word on the Web - 13/10/2009