Prepaid Credit Cards: Safety While Traveling (Load it Up Before You Go)

If you travel a lot for business and find yourself constantly staying in hotel rooms where you may leave your wallet not realizing it until your on a plane to another state, then you may find yourself constantly worrying about this, causing unnecessary anxiety.

These days you can leave your credit cards at home so you don’t over spend anyway, but mainly because this way you won’t have to worry about canceling all those cards if you lose your wallet or someone steals your purse, and use prepaid credit cards instead.

Prepaid credit cards have a finite limit to them and they are protected from fraud, theft and if you lose them your not liable for the charges someone makes with your card. The prepaid cards are protected from ATM withdraw by a pin number just like your normal debit card, in fact the technology is exactly the same.

The beauty of the prepaid card is that you don’t have to put your real name on the card nor do you have to associate any part of your identity to the card. If you lose the card and your on a plane, you can call the prepaid credit card company and have the card turned off so nobody can use it, then you can have your balance transferred to a new card when you land. There are security measures in place so someone can’t just call the number on the card and do this as they won’t be able to answer the security questions.

You can also save yourself from overspending on your trip by budgeting a certain amount of your money to the trip before hand and loading up the prepaid credit card with a certain amount. You can check your balance at any time by calling the prepaid card company or using a cyber café to get online and see how much you have. You can also track your spending this way so you can better budget your next trip. Most prepaid credit card companies have a secure website you can use to access your card details down to the time you bought that starbucks coffee and where.

You can reuse the card or throw it away and get another one later. I tend to get a new card every time I load it up because it’s not expensive and it keeps any one company from being able to track my movements like credit card companies do. Even though the card is anonymous because your not giving them any real identity information I still would rather keep my spending habits private, this is one reason I use the prepaid card in the first place besides safety and protection. When traveling it’s not a good idea to carry cash, and money on a prepaid card is insured against fraud and theft just like a bank card so it just makes sense to use them.