When travelling cash is often king. It would be great to have access to the visa/link ATM network.
Already prepaid cards are available especially for this from people like fairfx.
Certainly too there are other firms like Entropay and Paxum/Payoneer that can be used for this goal too, but the fees in all examples are very expensive:
https://www.entropay.com/entropay-fees-straightforward-charges-no-surpriseshttps://www.paxum.com/payment/fees.php?view=views/fees.xslThere are banks in America and the UK who charge no fees for withdrawing cash and use the reference conversion rate (I wonder if there's any in Russia or China like this). The problem with these of course is that you have no anonymity and all your cash is in one basket. I have even seen situations where
more than the balance has been taken, sending the user into debt. This is where cycling cards like virtual credit cards would be useful.
There are other companies especially for people who can't open bank accounts... I feel it very harsh that these are the very people who have to pay the highest rates! Some have to pay per domestic cash withdrawal and on purchases!
Before Bitcoin was invented I wondered, why isn't there a egold to cash card? It's a global market I thought, surely a bank in Panama etc could offer this?
With some research I found that there were people offering them but it was all very dodgy, and how it works was very hush-hush.
One way a cash card might be able to be achieved is to write a card with virtual (debit) card details... but this sounds sketchy, especially as we don't know much about the virtual card system.
What I'd like to know is how do these cards work? What does it take to be a reseller?
I have a gut feeling that if one has a bank one can do it... but visa/mastercard can block it at any point.
One way I can think to do it would be expensive and without any anonymity - register as a credit union and purchase cards for members from
...I forget the name of the company now... they were associated with Caxton......
but unfortunately these cards charge ~£3 per withdrawal.
I wondered what it would take to go direct to VISA instead.I'd just like to know more about how things work (would be nice to know what happens to our money when it comes out the wall right?)
but like most things related to banking, all the information is hard to come by, either for security of due to the people who know keeping the info to themselves because they profit from it.