Prepaid Mastercards

[210640jm]

Has anyone used a prepaid Mastercard in hotels as we need a card registering with our holiday hotel on arrival. They accept Visa and Mastercards but wondered if a prepaid one will be accepted. We do not have a credit card.

[bednobs]

you would have to ask the hotel. Many hotels do not accept the prepaid type cards. i assume this is because of the different way they work - ie if you were to run up a bill and do a runner, if they had a credit card, they could still charge you, but with a prepaid on they couln't

[chazza]

Be careful when using something like this in a hotel, friends of mine used one and loaded the amount of money they thought they would need for their holiday onto it.

Often when you arrive at hotels they will "block off" an amount of money per night for damages, deposit etc. However this can't be done on a prepaid or debit card so the hotel took the money directly from the account, at a rate of $50 per night. This took months to get back.

My advice would be to get a 0% credit card before going, use it for the hotel, pay it off asap and don't use it again