Review of Western Union MoneyWise Prepaid Mastercard

Summary - The Western Union Money Wise Prepaid MasterCard is perhaps the most cost effective prepaid card among its class. It's key feature is that it has no monthly fee and no transaction fee as well. In a market where prepaid cards try to nickel and dime you with fees for every service, this card is truly a refreshing breathe of fresh air.

No Fees On Important Items - Really? - Fees. The dreaded word when it comes to prepaid credit cards. And thank goodness that this card does away with most of these fees. Firstly, there is no monthly maintenance fee. Secondly, there is no fee for both PIN based and signature based transactions.

OK, so what about customer calls? Many other prepaid cards charge a fee for calling customer service reps. How about this card? Well, it turns out that there are no fees if you call either customer service or their IVR (interactive voice response) calls to find out your card balance.

Best of all, withdrawing cash from ATM is free.

I've already said up front in the beginning that I think this is perhaps the most cost effective card. But how so? Well, we said that this card does not charge any monthly fees. And some other cards do not as well. However, it comes with strings attached. And it is that you have to load a certain amount in your card a month to get your monthly fees waived. For example, the Silver Prepaid Card waives your monthly fee is you load $300 a month. The Mango Prepaid Card waives it if you load $500 a month. The Walmart Money Card waives their monthly fee if you load $1000. So the great thing about this card is that there are no monthly fees without any strings attached.

Fees for calling customer service representatives is another pet peeve of mine when it comes to these cards. Aside from Western Union, there are vey few cards that waive these fees. The ones that do, like the Account Now Card, have fees in other areas which this card does not have.

There are also very few cards which do not charge any fees for ATM withdrawal. The GreenDot Card is one of the rare cards that do not charge any such fees because they have lots of their own ATMs around the country. And I guess so does Western Union. The only gripe one can have with this card is that there are no reward programs, which a couple of other cards have. For example, the Upside Card has an online shopping portal where you can earn cash rebates. But this is really minor.

The Western Union Money Wise Prepaid MasterCard is the best prepaid card in the market today because it does not charge you fees for services that other cards are happy to charge. This means that even if you have bad credit or no credit, you will not feel ripped off when you are a card member. This card is on our Editors Choice List.