PayPal Access card: Still waiting after a year
14th April 2011
PayPal UK cancelled the Visa PayPal Top Up Card and parted company with the issuer, RBS Bank. The program ended before a replacement program was put in place and caused uproar amongst the happy users of the card.
17th June 2011
PayPal UK launched the PayPal Access Mastercard through PrePay Technologies. It’s a big step forward from the previous Top Up card as you didn’t have to pre-load it, when you use the card it pulls funds directly from your PayPal account. The card only available at launch by invitation which selected PayPal customers will receive via email
17th Jun 2012
The PayPal Access Mastercard has remained only available by invitation to selected PayPal customers and as far as I’m aware that’s pretty much remained those that were invited at launch. If you weren’t lucky enough to get one you probably still don’t have one.
Why did PayPal cancel the original card before the new one was put in place. That to be honest was probably unfortunate and not intentional. Why have they taken so long to open up the program to all PayPal users? Who knows?
There can only be two reasons. Either the program was put in place in a rush and PayPal have decided it’s not scalable in it’s current form or they’re cooking up something even better and just aren’t ready to release it.
A year to have a PayPal card and yet not allow anyone else to apply for it is a long time though. There are still many previous PayPal Top Up cards who didn’t get a PayPal Access card and would have loved one. Would it really have been that bad a thing to let all users have a PayPal Access card for the last year while they worked on whatever they’ve been working on?
Come on PayPal, either get a move on and release whatever you’re working on or just bite the bullet, accept it’s going to take a while and open up PayPal Access cards to everyone. A year is a long time to wait.
J.M. says
7:52 am on 17/06/2012
Does eBay UK not have a standard Paypal Visa Debit Card?
Chris Dawson says
8:33 am on June 17th, 2012
No we don’t, most UK PayPal users have had nothing for a whole year
Ross says
9:04 am on 17/06/2012
There is an ongoing fault with the card that has not been resolved. Some payments get rejected despite funds being available and the money is debited from the Paypal account. It eventually returns to the account.
As I understand it, the system isn’t quick enough as there is an extra place to process. Currently when you pay with a card the merchant’s bank calls up the buyer’s bank to ask for the funds, in this case the buyer’s bank has to check with Paypal which is often seen as a rejection.
DBL says
9:37 am on 17/06/2012
We have one each very handy indeed especially for business expenses while out as expenses are then automatically picked up by my accounting software. Makes things a lot easier.
Left says
1:09 pm on 17/06/2012
I’ve found the new card fairly useless, a lot of places won’t accept the card as it is not issued by a UK bank. Argos refused it as have several websites.
Gerry007 says
1:53 pm on 17/06/2012
.
Used mine on ATMs & instore pin machines & seems to work OK.
Mike says
6:38 pm on 17/06/2012
I’ve got one and it works just fine, made a big difference to my business activities… never had a problem with it
Pumpkin says
6:41 pm on 17/06/2012
I’ve found mine to be an essential! I use it for everything. Buying postage at the post office is the biggest thing I use it for. It did have a blip on the Royal Mail website the other day when it told me that the card number wasn’t valid, but after a few more attempts it went through.
I’ve only ever had it not work once, and that was in Brantano, it rejected the card, but worked the second time.
I’ve used it in most high street shops and never had any major problems. When I had the access card however, that caused all sort of problems as it was essentially a Visa Electron and many shops wouldn’t take it, but the Master Card version works great, and I’d highly recommend it.
Gary says
7:43 pm on 17/06/2012
The Paypal Mastercard has made business accounting so much easier. Just print off the single statement for the entire accounting period and bingo!
And bank statements are now much shorter with far fewer entries to reconcile.
Paypal must win as I am more inclined to leave higher balances in the Paypal account as a result of having the Mastercard. If I am more inclined to leave money with paypal others probably are too.
For me there are 2 drawbacks:-
a) the spending limit of £1500. Stock purchases often exceed this.
b) can’t be used when details are required in advance for an open ended type payment situation. Example being pay at pump type payments at 24hr petrol filling stations.
Andrew Milburn says
3:50 pm on 18/06/2012
Hi,
AS others have said I find the card fantastic. Use it in ATM (Some of the ATM’s in corner shops do not accept it….this is not the Paypal card it is all cards of this type.)
I use the card to buy postage, and also to buy stock from companies, I could not live without it now
Thanks
Andrew
Rob says
12:08 pm on 25/06/2012
We had one at launch and initially it was great, and meant we didn’t have to transfer from Paypal to a bank account when we needed to make large purchases from suppliers.
However, we’ve stopped using it altogether, the reason being that the card started being rejected, but funds were taken out. The second attempt usually worked, but it meant the same amount was taken twice from our Paypal account. The last straw was when it was rejected online by DVLA for car tax late last year. This was the first time it had ever rejected it online. I didn’t try again as that would have meant £240 being taken out with no way of getting £120 back for 10 days. Paypal and PPT have been utterly useless sorting the problem out, which has been going on for around a year. There are threads on both the PS Forum and Seller Central about it.