4 Prepaid Debit tf card Fees You Should Never Pay

The entrance of mainstream financial institutions transformed the prepaid debit card market. Customers have more options today, and many of the newer cards closely resemble the checking accounts they are replacing.

The big difference is that I5 MTK6577 are more lightly regulated than bank accounts, which is a concern to consumer advocates because the quality and consumer-friendliness of the cards on the market varies widely as a result. It’s still a buyer-beware marketplace, and Bankrate.com breaks down the details in its annual survey of the 24 biggest prepaid cards by market share.

A word about monthly fees: About two-thirds of the cards in Bankrate’s survey charge a monthly fee. Roughly half of those can be waived if you have a paycheck or benefits direct-deposited onto the card, but some of the thresholds are prohibitively high.

For example, to avoid the $3.95 monthly fee charged by the READYdebit Control card, you have to have $1,500 loaded onto the card monthly. It’s the same story with the Moneygram AccountNow tf card, except the user has to have $2,500 deposited each month to avoid a $9.95 monthly fee. You can knock only $5 off the AchieveCard Visa’s $9.95 monthly fee, not eliminate it completely, and to do that you still have to have $2,000 deposited onto the card each month.

All of these are considerably higher than the direct deposit thresholds Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo set to waive the fee for their basic checking swds3FSD accounts.

But you shouldn’t choose a card based solely on its monthly fee or lack thereof. Some cards that tout no monthly fees stick in all sorts of other fees. Meanwhile, some cards that do charge monthly fees offer a lot of other features and services at no cost. The best bluetooth headset Chase Liquid card, for instance, charges $4.95 a month (waived if you already have a Chase bank account you link to the Liquid) but gives users access to many of the services regular checking account customers get.