Kenyan Prepaid Cards
It has been a struggle searching for a prepaid card that works with my PayPal account and at the same time offering excellent support services.
Below I will review the cards that I have used to date:
Toucan Visa Card
The Toucan Visa prepaid card issued by BOA, seamlessly links to PayPal. The challenge comes in accessing the back end portal where one can view their statements and transactions. The staffs issuing the card have no knowledge of its capabilities. The reason I ceased using this card is I paid for a reconnection fee and the duration of the card issued was less than a year. I had to take it since there were no other options and I needed it for my online transactions but upon expiry of the card I opted to seek another option. I renewed this card once
I&M Visa Pre-Pay M-pesa Safari Card
After shopping around I found the I&M card which seemed to fit my requirements. It was such a joy getting the card. The staff at the bank assisted me in filling in the necessary documentation and took me through the card activation and answered my numerous queries. I was told to expect an SMS letting me know my card has been activated. Fast forward to linking it onto Pay Pal, I had filled in all the details as required but my card had an error with regard to the postal addresses being different. I then called the customer service on the card who then said they had taken the note of the problem. A few days later I called to find out if it had been resolved but nothing yet. I then got a call during the weekend saying it had been resolved on trying it the same error occurred. I called the customer service number and another request was logged in. I am still waiting…
Payoneer Card
Needless to say I got restless and went online and registered for my Payoneer card which was approved and arrived within 3 weeks. An email prompting me to activate the card online was sent and voila the card was ready to be utilized.
Nakumatt Global Prepaid MasterCard
At this point I had become a prepaid card sceptic. . I had nothing to lose so I traded in my old loyalty card for the new card which serves as both a loyalty card and a prepaid Master Card. There are two options to activate either to load KSh 100 or to load the KSh 1,000 which can be utilized for any transaction. None of the previous cards I have tried had this option. On the day I signed up for my card the network was down so I could not take it with me but I was assured a text would be sent. Once that happened I went and picked up my card. I could hardly wait for the final test. Would it link to my PayPal? The linkage occurred instantly. I waited for the code to be sent by PayPal to link my card but was unable to view my statement. I called the customer service number on the card and explained my dilemma, they said that it had to do with the financial part of the card and they gave me the DTB customer service number. I called and in a couple of seconds my problem was resolved. It turned out I was using the wrong browser. I was amazed at how the whole system works and I am happy with the card and would recommend it.
PAKenya 